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

Samoan

WALS coordinates: 13° 55′ S, 171° 50′ W

spoken in American Samoa, Samoa

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Samoan
Routledge:
    Other:
      ISO 639-3:

      Features

      Feature Value References
      Morphology
      Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Little affixation
      Reduplication Productive full and partial reduplication
      Nominal Categories
      Coding of Nominal Plurality Plural word
      Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns Person-number stem + pronominal plural affix
      Definite Articles Definite word distinct from demonstrative
      Indefinite Articles Indefinite word distinct from 'one'
      Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives Three-way contrast
      Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives Identical
      Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives Related to remote demonstratives
      Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns No gender distinctions
      Indefinite Pronouns Generic-noun-based
      Person Marking on Adpositions No person marking
      Position of Case Affixes No case affixes or adpositional clitics
      Comitatives and Instrumentals Differentiation
      Ordinal Numerals First, two, three
      Distributive Numerals Marked by prefix
      Numeral Classifiers Optional
      Nominal Syntax
      Obligatory Possessive Inflection Absent
      Possessive Classification No possessive classification
      Action Nominal Constructions Other
      Noun Phrase Conjunction 'And' identical to 'with'
      Verbal Categories
      Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Tense-aspect prefixes
      Suppletion According to Tense and Aspect None
      Verbal Number and Suppletion Singular-plural pairs, suppletion
      Word Order
      Order of Subject and Verb VS
      Order of Object and Verb VO
      Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase Prepositions
      Order of Genitive and Noun Noun-Genitive
      Order of Adjective and Noun Noun-Adjective
      Order of Demonstrative and Noun Mixed
      Order of Numeral and Noun Noun-Numeral
      Order of Relative Clause and Noun Noun-Relative clause
      Position of Polar Question Particles Initial
      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
      Alignment of Verbal Person Marking Neutral
      Verbal Person Marking No person marking
      Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking No person marking
      Order of Person Markers on the Verb A and P do not or do not both occur on the verb
      Passive Constructions Absent
      Antipassive Constructions No antipassive
      Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions Morphological but no compound
      Negative Morphemes Negative particle
      Polar Questions Question particle
      Predicative Possession Locational
      Predicative Adjectives Verbal encoding
      Nominal and Locational Predication Different
      Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals Possible
      Comparative Constructions Conjoined
      Complex Sentences
      'Want' Complement Subjects Desiderative particle
      Lexicon
      Hand and Arm Identical
      Finger and Hand Different
      Other
      Para-Linguistic Usages of Clicks Affective meanings