Kpelle

WALS coordinates: 7° N, 10° W

Alternative Names

Feature	Value	References
Phonology
Consonant Inventories	Average
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	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 suffix
The Associative Plural	Associative same as additive plural
Ordinal Numerals	One, two, three
Numeral Classifiers	Absent
Nominal Syntax
Noun Phrase Conjunction	'And' identical to 'with'
Verbal Categories
The Morphological Imperative	No second-person imperatives
The Prohibitive	Normal imperative + normal negative
Imperative-Hortative Systems	Both types of system
The Optative	Inflectional optative absent
Word Order
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
Simple Clauses
Predicative Possession	Locational
Predicative Adjectives	Mixed
Nominal and Locational Predication	Different
Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals	Impossible