1. Family: Australian
  2. Genus: Pama-Nyungan

Kuku-Yalanji

WALS coordinates: 16° S, 145° E

spoken in Australia

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Gugu Yalandyi
Routledge:
  • Gugu Yalandyi
Other:
  • Gugu Yalanji,
  • Gugu-Yalanji,
  • Kuku Yalanji
ISO 639-3:

Features

Feature Value References
Phonology
Consonant Inventories Small
Vowel Quality Inventories Small (2-4)
Consonant-Vowel Ratio Average
Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives No voicing constrast
Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems Other
Uvular Consonants None
Glottalized Consonants No glottalized consonants
Lateral Consonants /l/, no obstruent laterals
Front Rounded Vowels None
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 No fricatives
Presence of Uncommon Consonants None
Morphology
Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Strongly suffixing
Reduplication Productive full and partial reduplication
Nominal Categories
Occurrence of Nominal Plurality All nouns, always optional
Indefinite Pronouns Generic-noun-based
Position of Case Affixes Case suffixes
Verbal Categories
Perfective/Imperfective Aspect No grammatical marking
The Past Tense Present, no remoteness distinctions
The Future Tense No inflectional future
The Perfect No perfect
Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Tense-aspect suffixes
Word Order
Order of Subject and Verb SV
Order of Object and Verb OV
Order of Genitive and Noun Genitive-Noun
Order of Adjective and Noun No dominant order
Order of Numeral and Noun No dominant order
Position of Polar Question Particles Initial
Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause Initial subordinator word
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun Other
Simple Clauses
Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give' Indirect-object construction
Polar Questions Question particle
Complex Sentences
'Want' Complement Subjects Subject is left implicit
Lexicon
Number of Non-Derived Basic Colour Categories 3
Number of Basic Colour Categories 3-4
Green and Blue None
Red and Yellow None