1. Family: Niger-Congo
  2. Subfamily: Mande
  3. Genus: Eastern Mande

Dan

WALS coordinates: 7° 30′ N, 8° W

spoken in Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Dan
Routledge:
  • Gio
Other:
  • Gio,
  • Yacouba
ISO 639-3:

Features

Feature Value References
Phonology
Consonant Inventories Average
Vowel Quality Inventories Large (7-14)
Consonant-Vowel Ratio Low
Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives In both plosives and fricatives
Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems None missing in /p t k b d g/
Uvular Consonants None
Glottalized Consonants Implosives only
Lateral Consonants /l/, no obstruent laterals
Front Rounded Vowels None
Syllable Structure Moderately complex
Tone Complex tone system
Absence of Common Consonants All present
Presence of Uncommon Consonants Labial-velars
Nominal Categories
Coding of Nominal Plurality Plural word
Position of Case Affixes No case affixes or adpositional clitics
Verbal Categories
Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Tense-aspect suffixes
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 Genitive and Noun Genitive-Noun
Order of Adjective and Noun Noun-Adjective
Order of Demonstrative and Noun Noun-Demonstrative
Order of Numeral and Noun Noun-Numeral
Order of Relative Clause and Noun Noun-Relative clause
Position of Polar Question Particles Final
Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions Not initial interrogative phrase
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
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun OV and NAdj
Simple Clauses
Negative Morphemes Negative particle
Polar Questions Question particle
Lexicon
Number of Non-Derived Basic Colour Categories 3
Number of Basic Colour Categories 3-4
Green and Blue Black/green/blue
Red and Yellow Red/yellow