Mba

WALS coordinates: 1° N, 25° E

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	Simple
Tone	Complex tone system
Absence of Common Consonants	All present
Presence of Uncommon Consonants	Labial-velars
Morphology
Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology	Weakly prefixing
Nominal Categories
Coding of Nominal Plurality	Plural suffix
Position of Case Affixes	Case suffixes
Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes	Possessive prefixes
Verbal Categories
Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes	Tense-aspect prefixes
Word Order
Order of Subject, Object and Verb	SVO
Order of Subject and Verb	SV
Order of Object and Verb	VO
Order of Genitive and Noun	Genitive-Noun
Order of Adjective and Noun	Noun-Adjective
Order of Demonstrative and Noun	Demonstrative suffix
Order of Numeral and Noun	Noun-Numeral
Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions	Not initial interrogative phrase
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun	VO and NAdj
Simple Clauses
Negative Morphemes	Negative particle