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

Saliba (in Papua New Guinea)

WALS coordinates: 10° 35′ S, 150° 43′ E

spoken in Papua New Guinea

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Suau
Routledge:
  • Suau
Other:
  • Suau,
  • Saliba (PNG)
ISO 639-3:

Features

Feature Value References
Morphology
Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Weakly suffixing
Nominal Categories
Coding of Nominal Plurality Plural suffix
Occurrence of Nominal Plurality Only human nouns, obligatory
Definite Articles Definite word distinct from demonstrative
Indefinite Articles Indefinite word distinct from 'one'
Position of Case Affixes No case affixes or adpositional clitics
Comitatives and Instrumentals Differentiation
Ordinal Numerals First, two-th, three-th
Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes Possessive suffixes
Verbal Categories
Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Tense-aspect suffixes
The Morphological Imperative No second-person imperatives
The Prohibitive Normal imperative + special negative
Word Order
Order of Object and Verb OV
Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase Postpositions
Order of Genitive and Noun Genitive-Noun
Order of Adjective and Noun Noun-Adjective
Order of Demonstrative and Noun Demonstrative-Noun
Order of Numeral and Noun Noun-Numeral
Order of Relative Clause and Noun Noun-Relative clause
Position of Polar Question Particles Final
Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions Not initial interrogative phrase
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase OV and Postpositions
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun OV and NRel
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun OV and NAdj
Simple Clauses
Expression of Pronominal Subjects Subject affixes on verb
Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give' Mixed
Negative Morphemes Negative particle
Polar Questions Question particle
Predicative Possession Topic
Complex Sentences
'Want' Complement Subjects Subject is expressed overtly
Other
Para-Linguistic Usages of Clicks Affective meanings