1. Family: Sino-Tibetan
  2. Subfamily: Tibeto-Burman
  3. Genus: Karen

Kayah Li (Eastern)

WALS coordinates: 19° N, 97° 30′ E

spoken in Thailand, Myanmar

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Kayah
Routledge:
    Other:
    • Kayah Li,
    • Karen (Red),
    • E Kayah,
    • Eastern Kayah Li,
    • Eastern Kayah
    ISO 639-3:

    Features

    Feature Value References
    Phonology
    Consonant Inventories Moderately small
    Vowel Quality Inventories Large (7-14)
    Consonant-Vowel Ratio Low
    Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives In plosives alone
    Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems Missing /g/
    Uvular Consonants None
    Glottalized Consonants No glottalized consonants
    Lateral Consonants /l/, no obstruent laterals
    The Velar Nasal Initial velar nasal
    Vowel Nasalization Contrast absent
    Front Rounded Vowels None
    Syllable Structure Moderately complex
    Tone Complex tone system
    Absence of Common Consonants All present
    Presence of Uncommon Consonants None
    Morphology
    Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Little affixation
    Case Syncretism No case marking
    Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking No subject person/number marking
    Nominal Categories
    Coding of Nominal Plurality No plural
    Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns Person-number stem
    The Associative Plural Unique periphrastic associative plural
    Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Independent Pronouns No inclusive/exclusive
    Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Verbal Inflection No person marking
    Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives Two-way contrast
    Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives Unrelated
    Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns No gender distinctions
    Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns No politeness distinction
    Person Marking on Adpositions No person marking
    Number of Cases No morphological case-marking
    Asymmetrical Case-Marking No case-marking
    Position of Case Affixes No case affixes or adpositional clitics
    Numeral Classifiers Obligatory
    Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes No possessive affixes
    Nominal Syntax
    Genitives, Adjectives and Relative Clauses Highly differentiated
    Adjectives without Nouns Marked by mixed or other strategies
    Action Nominal Constructions No action nominals
    Verbal Categories
    Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes No tense-aspect inflection
    The Morphological Imperative No second-person imperatives
    The Prohibitive Normal imperative + special negative
    Imperative-Hortative Systems Maximal system
    The Optative Inflectional optative absent
    Situational Possibility Other kinds of markers
    Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality Direct and indirect
    Coding of Evidentiality Verbal affix or clitic
    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 No dominant 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
    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 Mixed
    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 VO and NRel
    Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun VO and NAdj
    Simple Clauses
    Alignment of Case Marking of Full Noun Phrases Neutral
    Alignment of Case Marking of Pronouns Neutral
    Alignment of Verbal Person Marking Neutral
    Expression of Pronominal Subjects Optional pronouns in subject position
    Verbal Person Marking No person marking
    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 Absent
    Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions Compound but no morphological
    Negative Morphemes Negative word, unclear if verb or particle
    Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation Both
    Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation A/Cat
    Polar Questions Question particle
    Complex Sentences
    Relativization on Subjects Pronoun-retention
    Relativization on Obliques Pronoun-retention
    'Want' Complement Subjects Subject is left implicit
    Lexicon
    Numeral Bases Decimal