1. Family: Austronesian
  2. Subfamily: Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
  3. Genus: Oceanic

Niuean

WALS coordinates: 19° 3′ S, 170° 7′ W

spoken in New Zealand

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Niuean
Routledge:
  • Niue
Other:
    ISO 639-3:

    Features

    Feature Value References
    Morphology
    Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Little affixation
    Nominal Categories
    Coding of Nominal Plurality Plural word
    Occurrence of Nominal Plurality All nouns, always obligatory
    Definite Articles No definite, but indefinite article
    Indefinite Pronouns Generic-noun-based
    Position of Case Affixes No case affixes or adpositional clitics
    Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes No possessive affixes
    Nominal Syntax
    Nominal and Verbal Conjunction Identity
    Verbal Categories
    Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes No tense-aspect inflection
    The Optative Inflectional optative absent
    Word Order
    Order of Subject, Object and Verb VSO
    Order of Subject and Verb VS
    Order of Object and Verb VO
    Order of Object, Oblique, and Verb VOX
    Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase Prepositions
    Order of Genitive and Noun Noun-Genitive
    Order of Adjective and Noun Noun-Adjective
    Order of Numeral and Noun Numeral-Noun
    Order of Relative Clause and Noun Noun-Relative clause
    Order of Degree Word and Adjective Adjective-Degree word
    Position of Polar Question Particles Other position
    Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions Not initial interrogative phrase
    Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause Initial subordinator word
    Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase VO and Prepositions
    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
    Expression of Pronominal Subjects Optional pronouns in subject position
    Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give' Indirect-object construction
    Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions Morphological but no compound
    Negative Morphemes Negative word, unclear if verb or particle
    Negative Indefinite Pronouns and Predicate Negation Predicate negation also present
    Polar Questions Question particle
    Predicative Adjectives Verbal encoding
    Nominal and Locational Predication Different
    Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals Possible
    Complex Sentences
    'Want' Complement Subjects Subject is left implicit
    Lexicon
    Hand and Arm Identical
    Finger and Hand Different