Family: Afro-Asiatic
Subfamily: Cushitic
Genus: Eastern Cushitic

Somali

WALS coordinates: 3° N, 45° E

Find examples here.

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:	Somali
Ruhlen:	Somali
Routledge:
Other:
ISO 639-3:	som (article in Wikipedia)

Features

ID	Feature	Value	Area
1A	Consonant Inventories	Average	Phonology	comment
2A	Vowel Quality Inventories	Large (7-14)	Phonology	comment
3A	Consonant-Vowel Ratio	Moderately low	Phonology	comment
4A	Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives	In plosives alone	Phonology	comment
5A	Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems	Missing /p/	Phonology	comment
6A	Uvular Consonants	Uvular stops only	Phonology	comment
7A	Glottalized Consonants	No glottalized consonants	Phonology	comment
8A	Lateral Consonants	/l/, no obstruent laterals	Phonology	comment
9A	The Velar Nasal	No velar nasal	Phonology	comment
11A	Front Rounded Vowels	None	Phonology	comment
12A	Syllable Structure	Moderately complex	Phonology	comment
13A	Tone	Simple tone system	Phonology	comment
18A	Absence of Common Consonants	All present	Phonology	comment
19A	Presence of Uncommon Consonants	Pharyngeals	Phonology	comment
26A	Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology	Strongly suffixing	Morphology	comment
27A	Reduplication	Productive full and partial reduplication	Morphology	comment
33A	Coding of Nominal Plurality	Plural suffix	Nominal Categories	comment
34A	Occurrence of Nominal Plurality	All nouns, always obligatory	Nominal Categories	comment
37A	Definite Articles	Definite affix	Nominal Categories	comment
38A	Indefinite Articles	No indefinite, but definite article	Nominal Categories	comment
41A	Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives	Four-way contrast	Nominal Categories	comment examples
42A	Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives	Different inflection	Nominal Categories	comment examples
45A	Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns	No politeness distinction	Nominal Categories	comment
46A	Indefinite Pronouns	Generic-noun-based	Nominal Categories	comment
47A	Intensifiers and Reflexive Pronouns	Differentiated	Nominal Categories	comment
49A	Number of Cases	3 cases	Nominal Categories	comment
50A	Asymmetrical Case-Marking	Symmetrical	Nominal Categories	comment
51A	Position of Case Affixes	No case affixes or adpositional clitics	Nominal Categories	comment
52A	Comitatives and Instrumentals	Differentiation	Nominal Categories	comment examples
53A	Ordinal Numerals	One-th, two-th, three-th	Nominal Categories	comment
57A	Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes	Possessive suffixes	Nominal Categories	comment
63A	Noun Phrase Conjunction	'And' different from 'with'	Nominal Syntax	comment
64A	Nominal and Verbal Conjunction	Differentiation	Nominal Syntax	comment examples
65A	Perfective/Imperfective Aspect	No grammatical marking	Verbal Categories	comment
66A	The Past Tense	Present, no remoteness distinctions	Verbal Categories	comment
67A	The Future Tense	Inflectional future exists	Verbal Categories	comment
68A	The Perfect	No perfect	Verbal Categories	comment
69A	Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes	Tense-aspect suffixes	Verbal Categories	comment
73A	The Optative	Inflectional optative absent	Verbal Categories	comment
74A	Situational Possibility	Verbal constructions	Verbal Categories	comment
75A	Epistemic Possibility	Affixes on verbs	Verbal Categories	comment
76A	Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking	No overlap	Verbal Categories	comment
81A	Order of Subject, Object and Verb	SOV	Word Order	comment
82A	Order of Subject and Verb	SV	Word Order	comment
83A	Order of Object and Verb	OV	Word Order	comment
85A	Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase	No dominant order	Word Order	comment
86A	Order of Genitive and Noun	No dominant order	Word Order	comment
87A	Order of Adjective and Noun	Noun-Adjective	Word Order	comment
88A	Order of Demonstrative and Noun	Demonstrative suffix	Word Order	comment
89A	Order of Numeral and Noun	Numeral-Noun	Word Order	comment
90A	Order of Relative Clause and Noun	Noun-Relative clause	Word Order	comment
90C	Postnominal relative clauses	Noun-Relative clause (NRel) dominant	Word Order	comment
91A	Order of Degree Word and Adjective	Degree word-Adjective	Word Order	comment
92A	Position of Polar Question Particles	Other position	Word Order	comment
93A	Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions	Not initial interrogative phrase	Word Order	comment
94A	Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause	Initial subordinator word	Word Order	comment
95A	Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase	Other	Word Order	comment
96A	Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun	OV and NRel	Word Order	comment
97A	Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun	OV and NAdj	Word Order	comment
101A	Expression of Pronominal Subjects	Subject pronouns in different position	Simple Clauses	comment
105A	Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give'	Secondary-object construction	Simple Clauses	comment
112A	Negative Morphemes	Negative particle	Simple Clauses	comment
113A	Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation	Asymmetric	Simple Clauses	comment
114A	Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation	A/Fin and A/Cat	Simple Clauses	comment
115A	Negative Indefinite Pronouns and Predicate Negation	Predicate negation also present	Simple Clauses	comment
116A	Polar Questions	Question particle	Simple Clauses	comment
117A	Predicative Possession	Conjunctional	Simple Clauses	comment
118A	Predicative Adjectives	Mixed	Simple Clauses	comment
119A	Nominal and Locational Predication	Different	Simple Clauses	comment
120A	Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals	Possible	Simple Clauses	comment
124A	'Want' Complement Subjects	Subject is expressed overtly	Complex Sentences	comment
125A	Purpose Clauses	Balanced	Complex Sentences	comment
126A	'When' Clauses	Balanced	Complex Sentences	comment
127A	Reason Clauses	Balanced	Complex Sentences	comment
138A	Tea	Words derived from Sinitic cha	Lexicon	comment examples
142A	Para-Linguistic Usages of Clicks	Logical meanings	Other	comment
143A	Order of Negative Morpheme and Verb	NegV	Word Order	comment
143E	Preverbal Negative Morphemes	NegV	Word Order	comment
143F	Postverbal Negative Morphemes	None	Word Order	comment
143G	Minor morphological means of signaling negation	None	Word Order	comment
144A	Position of Negative Word With Respect to Subject, Object, and Verb	SONegV	Word Order	comment
144B	Position of negative words relative to beginning and end of clause and with respect to adjacency to verb	Immed preverbal	Word Order	comment
144L	The Position of Negative Morphemes in SOV Languages	SONegV	Word Order	comment
144P	NegSOV Order	No NegSOV	Word Order	comment
144Q	SNegOV Order	No SNegOV	Word Order	comment
144R	SONegV Order	Word&NoDoubleNeg	Word Order	comment
144S	SOVNeg Order	NoSOVNeg	Word Order	comment