Kpelle
WALS coordinates: 7° N, 10° W
spoken in Liberia
Find examples here.
Alternative Names
| Ethnologue: | |
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| Ruhlen: |
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| Routledge: |
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| Other: |
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| ISO 639-3: |
Features
| ID | Feature | Value | Area | References | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1A | Consonant Inventories | Average | Phonology | comment | |
| 2A | Vowel Quality Inventories | Large (7-14) | Phonology | comment | |
| 3A | Consonant-Vowel Ratio | Average | Phonology | comment | |
| 4A | Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives | In both plosives and fricatives | Phonology | comment | |
| 5A | Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems | None missing in /p t k b d g/ | Phonology | comment | |
| 6A | Uvular Consonants | None | Phonology | comment | |
| 7A | Glottalized Consonants | Implosives only | Phonology | comment | |
| 8A | Lateral Consonants | /l/, no obstruent laterals | Phonology | comment | |
| 11A | Front Rounded Vowels | None | Phonology | comment | |
| 12A | Syllable Structure | Moderately complex | Phonology | comment | |
| 13A | Tone | Complex tone system | Phonology | comment | |
| 18A | Absence of Common Consonants | All present | Phonology | comment | |
| 19A | Presence of Uncommon Consonants | Labial-velars | Phonology | comment | |
| 33A | Coding of Nominal Plurality | Plural suffix | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 36A | The Associative Plural | Associative same as additive plural | Nominal Categories |
comment
examples |
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| 53A | Ordinal Numerals | One, two, three | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 55A | Numeral Classifiers | Absent | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 63A | Noun Phrase Conjunction | 'And' identical to 'with' | Nominal Syntax | comment | |
| 70A | The Morphological Imperative | No second-person imperatives | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 71A | The Prohibitive | Normal imperative + normal negative | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 72A | Imperative-Hortative Systems | Both types of system | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 73A | The Optative | Inflectional optative absent | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 86A | Order of Genitive and Noun | Genitive-Noun | Word Order | comment | |
| 87A | Order of Adjective and Noun | Noun-Adjective | Word Order | comment | |
| 88A | Order of Demonstrative and Noun | Noun-Demonstrative | Word Order | comment | |
| 89A | Order of Numeral and Noun | Noun-Numeral | Word Order | comment | |
| 117A | Predicative Possession | Locational | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 118A | Predicative Adjectives | Mixed | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 119A | Nominal and Locational Predication | Different | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 120A | Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals | Impossible | Simple Clauses | comment |
