1. Family: Na-Dene
  2. Genus: Athapaskan

Chipewyan

WALS coordinates: 59° N, 106° W

spoken in Canada

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Chipewyan
Routledge:
    Other:
    • Dene
    ISO 639-3:

    Features

    Feature Value References
    Phonology
    Consonant Inventories Large
    Vowel Quality Inventories Average (5-6)
    Consonant-Vowel Ratio High
    Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives In fricatives alone
    Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems Other
    Uvular Consonants None
    Glottalized Consonants Implosives only
    Lateral Consonants /l/ and lateral obstruent
    Front Rounded Vowels None
    Syllable Structure Moderately complex
    Tone Simple tone system
    Absence of Common Consonants No bilabials
    Presence of Uncommon Consonants 'Th' sounds
    Morphology
    Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Strong prefixing
    Nominal Categories
    Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns Person-number stem + pronominal plural affix
    Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes Possessive prefixes
    Verbal Categories
    Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Tense-aspect prefixes
    Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality Indirect only
    Coding of Evidentiality Verbal affix or clitic
    Word Order
    Order of Subject, Object and Verb SOV
    Order of Subject and Verb SV
    Order of Object and Verb OV
    Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase Postpositions
    Order of Demonstrative and Noun Demonstrative-Noun
    Order of Numeral and Noun Numeral-Noun
    Order of Relative Clause and Noun Noun-Relative clause
    Position of Polar Question Particles Final
    Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause Final subordinator word
    Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase OV and Postpositions
    Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun OV and NRel
    Simple Clauses
    Negative Morphemes Negative particle
    Polar Questions Question particle
    Lexicon
    Hand and Arm Different
    Finger and Hand Different
    Tea Others