1. Family: Niger-Congo
  2. Subfamily: Benue-Congo
  3. Genus: Bantoid

Nyamwezi

WALS coordinates: 5° S, 33° E

spoken in Tanzania

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Nyamwezi
Routledge:
    Other:
    • Nyamwezi,
    • Kinyamwezi
    ISO 639-3:

    Features

    Feature Value References  
    Morphology
    Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Strong prefixing
    Nominal Categories
    Number of Genders Five or more
    Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems Non-sex-based
    Systems of Gender Assignment Semantic and formal
    Coding of Nominal Plurality Plural prefix
    Definite Articles Demonstrative word used as definite article
    Indefinite Articles Indefinite word same as 'one'
    Ordinal Numerals First, two-th, three-th
    Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes No possessive affixes
    Verbal Categories
    Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Mixed type
    Word Order
    Order of Subject, Object and Verb No dominant order
    Order of Subject and Verb No dominant order
    Order of Object and Verb VO
    Order of Genitive and Noun Noun-Genitive
    Order of Adjective and Noun Noun-Adjective
    Order of Demonstrative and Noun Noun-Demonstrative
    Order of Numeral and Noun Noun-Numeral
    Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun VO and NAdj
    Simple Clauses
    Expression of Pronominal Subjects Subject affixes on verb
    Periphrastic Causative Constructions Purposive but no sequential
    Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions Morphological but no compound
    Negative Morphemes Negative affix
    Lexicon
    Hand and Arm Identical
    Finger and Hand Different