1. Family: Austronesian
  2. Subfamily: Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
  3. Genus: Oceanic

Hawaiian

WALS coordinates: 19° 34′ 48.00″ N, 155° 30′ W

spoken in United States

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Hawaiian
Routledge:
    Other:
    • 'Olelo Hawai'i
    ISO 639-3:

    Features

    Feature Value References
    Phonology
    Consonant Inventories Small
    Vowel Quality Inventories Average (5-6)
    Consonant-Vowel Ratio Low
    Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives No voicing constrast
    Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems Other
    Uvular Consonants None
    Glottalized Consonants No glottalized consonants
    Lateral Consonants /l/, no obstruent laterals
    Front Rounded Vowels None
    Syllable Structure Simple
    Tone No tones
    Fixed Stress Locations Penultimate
    Weight-Sensitive Stress Fixed stress (no weight-sensitivity)
    Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems Long vowel
    Rhythm Types Trochaic
    Absence of Common Consonants No fricatives
    Presence of Uncommon Consonants None
    Morphology
    Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Little affixation
    Reduplication Productive full and partial reduplication
    Nominal Categories
    Number of Genders None
    Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems No gender
    Systems of Gender Assignment No gender
    Coding of Nominal Plurality Plural word
    Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns Person-number stem + pronominal plural affix
    The Associative Plural Unique periphrastic associative plural
    Definite Articles Definite word distinct from demonstrative
    Indefinite Articles Indefinite word distinct from 'one'
    Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives Three-way contrast
    Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives Identical
    Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives Related to remote demonstratives
    Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns No politeness distinction
    Position of Case Affixes No case affixes or adpositional clitics
    Comitatives and Instrumentals Mixed
    Ordinal Numerals First/one-th, two-th, three-th
    Distributive Numerals Marked by prefix
    Numeral Classifiers Absent
    Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes No possessive affixes
    Nominal Syntax
    Nominal and Verbal Conjunction Identity
    Verbal Categories
    Perfective/Imperfective Aspect Grammatical marking
    The Past Tense No past tense
    The Future Tense No inflectional future
    The Perfect No perfect
    The Morphological Imperative No second-person imperatives
    The Prohibitive Normal imperative + special negative
    Imperative-Hortative Systems Maximal system
    Situational Possibility Verbal constructions
    Epistemic Possibility Other
    Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking Overlap for either possibility or necessity
    Word Order
    Order of Subject, Object and Verb VSO
    Order of Subject and Verb VS
    Order of Object and Verb VO
    Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase Prepositions
    Order of Genitive and Noun Noun-Genitive
    Order of Adjective and Noun Noun-Adjective
    Order of Demonstrative and Noun Demonstrative-Noun
    Order of Numeral and Noun Numeral-Noun
    Order of Relative Clause and Noun Noun-Relative clause
    Order of Degree Word and Adjective Adjective-Degree word
    Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions Not initial interrogative phrase
    Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause Initial subordinator word
    Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase VO and Prepositions
    Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun VO and NRel
    Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun VO and NAdj
    Simple Clauses
    Expression of Pronominal Subjects Optional pronouns in subject position
    Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions Morphological but no compound
    Negative Morphemes Negative particle
    Lexicon
    Hand and Arm Identical
    Finger and Hand Identical
    Tea Others