1. Family: Afro-Asiatic
  2. Subfamily: Chadic
  3. Genus: West Chadic

Kanakuru

WALS coordinates: 10° N, 12° E

spoken in Nigeria

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Kanakuru
Routledge:
  • Dera
Other:
    ISO 639-3:

    Features

    Feature Value References
    Phonology
    Consonant Inventories Moderately large
    Vowel Quality Inventories Average (5-6)
    Consonant-Vowel Ratio Average
    Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives In plosives alone
    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/ and lateral obstruent
    Front Rounded Vowels None
    Syllable Structure Moderately complex
    Tone Simple tone system
    Absence of Common Consonants All present
    Presence of Uncommon Consonants None
    Morphology
    Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Strongly suffixing
    Nominal Categories
    Coding of Nominal Plurality Plural suffix
    Definite Articles Definite affix
    Position of Case Affixes No case affixes or adpositional clitics
    Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes No possessive affixes
    Nominal Syntax
    Obligatory Possessive Inflection Absent
    Possessive Classification Two classes
    Verbal Categories
    Perfective/Imperfective Aspect Grammatical marking
    The Past Tense Present, no remoteness distinctions
    The Future Tense Inflectional future exists
    The Perfect No perfect
    Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Tense-aspect suffixes
    Word Order
    Order of Subject, Object and Verb SVO
    Order of Subject and Verb SV
    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 No dominant order
    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
    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 Other
    Simple Clauses
    Negative Morphemes Negative particle
    Polar Questions Question particle
    Predicative Adjectives Nonverbal encoding
    Nominal and Locational Predication Different
    Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals Impossible