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

Iaai

WALS coordinates: 20° 25′ S, 166° 35′ E

spoken in New Caledonia

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Iaai
Routledge:
    Other:
    • Iai
    ISO 639-3:

    Features

    Feature Value References
    Phonology
    Consonant Inventories Large
    Vowel Quality Inventories Large (7-14)
    Consonant-Vowel Ratio Average
    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 No glottalized consonants
    Lateral Consonants Laterals, but no /l/, no obstruent laterals
    Front Rounded Vowels High and mid
    Syllable Structure Moderately 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 Trochaic
    Absence of Common Consonants All present
    Presence of Uncommon Consonants 'Th' sounds
    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
    Definite Articles Definite word distinct from demonstrative
    Indefinite Articles Indefinite word distinct from 'one'
    Number of Cases No morphological case-marking
    Asymmetrical Case-Marking No case-marking
    Position of Case Affixes No case affixes or adpositional clitics
    Numeral Classifiers Absent
    Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes Possessive suffixes
    Verbal Categories
    Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes No tense-aspect inflection
    The Morphological Imperative No second-person imperatives
    The Prohibitive Normal imperative + normal negative
    Imperative-Hortative Systems Neither type of system
    The Optative Inflectional optative absent
    Word Order
    Order of Subject, Object and Verb SVO
    Order of Subject and Verb VS
    Order of Object and Verb VO
    Order of Object, Oblique, and Verb VOX
    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 Noun-Demonstrative
    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 Polar Question Particles Initial
    Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions 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 Subject pronouns in different position
    Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions Morphological but no compound
    Negative Morphemes Negative word, unclear if verb or particle
    Polar Questions Question particle
    Predicative Adjectives Verbal encoding
    Nominal and Locational Predication Different
    Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals Impossible