Family: Dravidian
Genus: Southern Dravidian

Malayalam

WALS coordinates: 10° N, 76° 30′ E

spoken in India

Find examples here.

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:	Malayalam
Ruhlen:	Malayalam
Routledge:
Other:
ISO 639-3:	mal (article in Wikipedia)

Features

ID	Feature	Value	Area
14A	Fixed Stress Locations	No fixed stress	Phonology	comment
15A	Weight-Sensitive Stress	Left-edge: First or second	Phonology	comment
16A	Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems	Long vowel	Phonology	comment
17A	Rhythm Types	Undetermined	Phonology	comment
27A	Reduplication	Full reduplication only	Morphology	comment
34A	Occurrence of Nominal Plurality	All nouns, always obligatory	Nominal Categories	comment
36A	The Associative Plural	Associative same as additive plural	Nominal Categories	comment examples
41A	Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives	Two-way contrast	Nominal Categories	comment examples
42A	Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives	Different inflection	Nominal Categories	comment examples
43A	Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives	Related for all demonstratives	Nominal Categories	comment examples
45A	Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns	Multiple politeness distinctions	Nominal Categories	comment examples
46A	Indefinite Pronouns	Interrogative-based	Nominal Categories	comment
47A	Intensifiers and Reflexive Pronouns	Identical	Nominal Categories	comment examples
49A	Number of Cases	6-7 cases	Nominal Categories	comment
50A	Asymmetrical Case-Marking	Symmetrical	Nominal Categories	comment
53A	Ordinal Numerals	First/one-th, two-th, three-th	Nominal Categories	comment
54A	Distributive Numerals	Marked by reduplication	Nominal Categories	comment
55A	Numeral Classifiers	Absent	Nominal Categories	comment
56A	Conjunctions and Universal Quantifiers	Formally similar, with interrogative	Nominal Categories	comment
64A	Nominal and Verbal Conjunction	Identity	Nominal Syntax	comment
70A	The Morphological Imperative	Second singular and second plural	Verbal Categories	comment
71A	The Prohibitive	Normal imperative + special negative	Verbal Categories	comment
72A	Imperative-Hortative Systems	Neither type of system	Verbal Categories	comment
73A	The Optative	Inflectional optative absent	Verbal Categories	comment
74A	Situational Possibility	Verbal constructions	Verbal Categories	comment
75A	Epistemic Possibility	Verbal constructions	Verbal Categories	comment
76A	Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking	Overlap for either possibility or necessity	Verbal Categories	comment
81A	Order of Subject, Object and Verb	SOV	Word Order	comment
82A	Order of Subject and Verb	SV	Word Order	comment
83A	Order of Object and Verb	OV	Word Order	comment
86A	Order of Genitive and Noun	Genitive-Noun	Word Order	comment
87A	Order of Adjective and Noun	Adjective-Noun	Word Order	comment
88A	Order of Demonstrative and Noun	Demonstrative-Noun	Word Order	comment
89A	Order of Numeral and Noun	Numeral-Noun	Word Order	comment
90A	Order of Relative Clause and Noun	Relative clause-Noun	Word Order	comment
90B	Prenominal relative clauses	Relative clause-Noun (RelN) dominant	Word Order	comment
92A	Position of Polar Question Particles	Final	Word Order	comment
93A	Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions	Not initial interrogative phrase	Word Order	comment
96A	Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun	OV and RelN	Word Order	comment
97A	Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun	OV and AdjN	Word Order	comment
101A	Expression of Pronominal Subjects	Optional pronouns in subject position	Simple Clauses	comment
105A	Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give'	Indirect-object construction	Simple Clauses	comment
111A	Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions	Morphological but no compound	Simple Clauses	comment
112A	Negative Morphemes	Negative affix	Simple Clauses	comment
113A	Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation	Both	Simple Clauses	comment
114A	Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation	A/Fin and A/Cat	Simple Clauses	comment
115A	Negative Indefinite Pronouns and Predicate Negation	Predicate negation also present	Simple Clauses	comment
116A	Polar Questions	Question particle	Simple Clauses	comment
118A	Predicative Adjectives	Nonverbal encoding	Simple Clauses	comment
119A	Nominal and Locational Predication	Different	Simple Clauses	comment
120A	Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals	Impossible	Simple Clauses	comment
125A	Purpose Clauses	Deranked	Complex Sentences	comment
127A	Reason Clauses	Balanced/deranked	Complex Sentences	comment
128A	Utterance Complement Clauses	Balanced	Complex Sentences	comment
129A	Hand and Arm	Identical	Lexicon	comment examples
130A	Finger and Hand	Different	Lexicon	comment examples
138A	Tea	Words derived from Sinitic cha	Lexicon	comment examples
142A	Para-Linguistic Usages of Clicks	Logical meanings	Other	comment
143A	Order of Negative Morpheme and Verb	[V-Neg]	Word Order	comment
143E	Preverbal Negative Morphemes	None	Word Order	comment
143F	Postverbal Negative Morphemes	[V-Neg]	Word Order	comment
143G	Minor morphological means of signaling negation	None	Word Order	comment
144A	Position of Negative Word With Respect to Subject, Object, and Verb	MorphNeg	Word Order	comment
144L	The Position of Negative Morphemes in SOV Languages	SO[V-Neg]	Word Order	comment
144P	NegSOV Order	No NegSOV	Word Order	comment
144Q	SNegOV Order	No SNegOV	Word Order	comment
144R	SONegV Order	No SONegV	Word Order	comment
144S	SOVNeg Order	Suffix&NoDoubleNeg	Word Order	comment