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

Lahu

WALS coordinates: 20° N, 98° 10′ 12.00″ E

spoken in China, Thailand, Myanmar

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Lahu
Routledge:
    Other:
      ISO 639-3:

      Features

      Feature Value References
      Phonology
      Consonant Inventories Moderately large
      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 Uvular stops only
      Glottalized Consonants No glottalized consonants
      Lateral Consonants /l/, no obstruent laterals
      The Velar Nasal Initial velar nasal
      Front Rounded Vowels None
      Syllable Structure Moderately complex
      Tone Complex tone system
      Absence of Common Consonants All present
      Presence of Uncommon Consonants None
      Morphology
      Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives Exclusively isolating
      Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives Monoexponential case
      Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Little affixation
      Nominal Categories
      Number of Genders None
      Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems No gender
      Systems of Gender Assignment No gender
      Coding of Nominal Plurality Plural suffix
      Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns Person stem + nominal plural affix
      The Associative Plural Associative same as additive plural
      Definite Articles Demonstrative word used as definite article
      Indefinite Articles Indefinite word same as 'one'
      Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives Unrelated
      Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns No gender distinctions
      Person Marking on Adpositions No person marking
      Position of Case Affixes No case affixes or adpositional clitics
      Comitatives and Instrumentals Differentiation
      Numeral Classifiers Obligatory
      Nominal Syntax
      Noun Phrase Conjunction 'And' different from 'with'
      Verbal Categories
      Perfective/Imperfective Aspect No grammatical marking
      The Past Tense No past tense
      The Future Tense No inflectional future
      The Perfect Other perfect
      The Optative Inflectional optative absent
      Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality Indirect only
      Coding of Evidentiality Separate particle
      Word Order
      Order of Subject, Object and Verb SOV
      Order of Subject and Verb SV
      Order of Object and Verb OV
      Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase Postpositions
      Order of Genitive and Noun Genitive-Noun
      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 Relative clause-Noun
      Order of Degree Word and Adjective Adjective-Degree word
      Position of Polar Question Particles Final
      Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions Not initial interrogative phrase
      Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause Final subordinator word
      Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase OV and Postpositions
      Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun OV and RelN
      Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun Other
      Simple Clauses
      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
      Passive Constructions Absent
      Periphrastic Causative Constructions Purposive but no sequential
      Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions Both
      Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation Both
      Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation A/Cat
      Polar Questions Question particle
      Predicative Possession Topic
      Predicative Adjectives Verbal encoding
      Nominal and Locational Predication Different
      Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals Possible
      Other
      Para-Linguistic Usages of Clicks Other or none