1. Family: Indo-European
  2. Genus: Indic

Bengali

WALS coordinates: 24° N, 90° E

spoken in Bangladesh, India

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Bengali
Routledge:
    Other:
    • Bangla
    ISO 639-3:

    Features

    Feature Value References
    Phonology
    Consonant Inventories Moderately large
    Vowel Quality Inventories Large (7-14)
    Consonant-Vowel Ratio Average
    Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives In plosives alone
    Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems None missing in /p t k b d g/
    Uvular Consonants None
    Glottalized Consonants No glottalized consonants
    Lateral Consonants /l/, no obstruent laterals
    Front Rounded Vowels None
    Syllable Structure Complex
    Tone No tones
    Fixed Stress Locations Initial
    Weight-Sensitive Stress Fixed stress (no weight-sensitivity)
    Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems No weight
    Rhythm Types No rhythmic stress
    Absence of Common Consonants All present
    Presence of Uncommon Consonants None
    Nominal Categories
    The Associative Plural Unique affixal associative plural
    Intensifiers and Reflexive Pronouns Identical
    Position of Case Affixes Case suffixes
    Ordinal Numerals First, two-th, three-th
    Distributive Numerals Marked by reduplication
    Numeral Classifiers Obligatory
    Verbal Categories
    Perfective/Imperfective Aspect No grammatical marking
    The Past Tense Present, no remoteness distinctions
    The Future Tense Inflectional future exists
    The Perfect Other perfect
    Suppletion According to Tense and Aspect Tense and aspect
    Verbal Number and Suppletion None
    Word Order
    Order of Subject, Object and Verb SOV
    Order of Subject and Verb SV
    Order of Object and Verb OV
    Order of Object, Oblique, and Verb XOV
    Simple Clauses
    Negative Morphemes Negative particle
    Predicative Possession Genitive
    Predicative Adjectives Nonverbal encoding
    Nominal and Locational Predication Identical
    Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals Possible
    Complex Sentences
    'Want' Complement Subjects Subject is left implicit
    Lexicon
    Tea Words derived from Sinitic cha
    Other
    Para-Linguistic Usages of Clicks Logical meanings