1. Family: Niger-Congo
  2. Subfamily: Atlantic
  3. Genus: Southern Atlantic

Kisi

WALS coordinates: 8° 50′ N, 10° 10′ W

spoken in Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Kisi
Routledge:
    Other:
    • Gizi
    ISO 639-3:

    Features

    Feature Value References
    Phonology
    Vowel Nasalization Contrast absent
    Morphology
    Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives Exclusively tonal
    Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives No case
    Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb 2-3 categories per word
    Locus of Marking in the Clause No marking
    Locus of Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases Dependent marking
    Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology Inconsistent or other
    Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Little affixation
    Nominal Categories
    Number of Genders Five or more
    Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems Non-sex-based
    Systems of Gender Assignment Semantic and formal
    Coding of Nominal Plurality Plural clitic
    Definite Articles No definite or indefinite article
    Indefinite Articles No definite or indefinite article
    Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives Two-way contrast
    Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives Identical
    Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives Related by gender markers
    Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns No gender distinctions
    Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns No politeness distinction
    Person Marking on Adpositions No person marking
    Position of Case Affixes No case affixes or adpositional clitics
    Comitatives and Instrumentals Identity
    Ordinal Numerals First, two-th, three-th
    Verbal Categories
    Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Tense-aspect tone
    The Morphological Imperative Second singular and second plural
    The Prohibitive Normal imperative + normal negative
    The Optative Inflectional optative absent
    Word Order
    Order of Subject, Object and Verb No dominant order
    Order of Subject and Verb SV
    Order of Object and Verb No dominant order
    Order of Object, Oblique, and Verb No dominant order
    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 Noun-Numeral
    Order of Relative Clause and Noun Noun-Relative clause
    Order of Degree Word and Adjective No dominant order
    Position of Polar Question Particles No question particle
    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 Other
    Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun Other
    Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun Other
    Simple Clauses
    Alignment of Verbal Person Marking Accusative
    Expression of Pronominal Subjects Subject pronouns in different position
    Verbal Person Marking Only the P argument
    Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking No person marking
    Order of Person Markers on the Verb A and P do not or do not both occur on the verb
    Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give' Double-object construction
    Passive Constructions Present
    Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions Morphological but no compound
    Negative Morphemes Negative particle
    Polar Questions Interrogative intonation only
    Complex Sentences
    Relativization on Subjects Gap
    Lexicon
    Hand and Arm Identical
    Finger and Hand Different