Pohnpeian

WALS coordinates: 6° 53′ N, 158° 15′ E

spoken in Micronesia

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Ponapean
Routledge:
  • Ponapean
Other:
  • Ponapean,
  • Ponape Proper
ISO 639-3:

Features

Feature Value References
Phonology
Consonant Inventories Small
Vowel Quality Inventories Large (7-14)
Consonant-Vowel Ratio Low
Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives No voicing constrast
Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems Other
Uvular Consonants None
Glottalized Consonants No glottalized consonants
Lateral Consonants /l/, no obstruent laterals
Front Rounded Vowels None
Syllable Structure Complex
Tone No tones
Absence of Common Consonants All present
Presence of Uncommon Consonants None
Morphology
Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Weakly suffixing
Reduplication Productive full and partial reduplication
Nominal Categories
Coding of Nominal Plurality No plural
Indefinite Articles Indefinite word distinct from 'one'
Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives Three-way contrast
Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives Different stem
Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives Unrelated
Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns Multiple politeness distinctions
Position of Case Affixes No case affixes or adpositional clitics
Numeral Classifiers Obligatory
Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes Possessive suffixes
Nominal Syntax
Obligatory Possessive Inflection Absent
Possessive Classification Two classes
Verbal Categories
Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Mixed type
Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality No grammatical evidentials
Coding of Evidentiality No grammatical evidentials
Word Order
Order of Subject, Object and Verb SVO
Order of Subject and Verb SV
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 No dominant order
Order of Adjective and Noun Noun-Adjective
Order of Demonstrative and Noun Noun-Demonstrative
Order of Numeral and Noun Noun-Numeral
Order of Relative Clause and Noun Noun-Relative clause
Order of Degree Word and Adjective No dominant order
Position of Polar Question Particles No question particle
Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions Mixed
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
Negative Morphemes Negative particle
Polar Questions Interrogative intonation only
Lexicon
Hand and Arm Identical
Finger and Hand Different
Numeral Bases Decimal
Tea Words derived from Min Nan Chinese te