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

Tawala

WALS coordinates: 10° 20′ S, 150° 40′ E

spoken in Papua New Guinea

Alternative Names

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

    Features

    Feature Value References
    Phonology
    Fixed Stress Locations Penultimate
    Weight-Sensitive Stress Fixed stress (no weight-sensitivity)
    Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems No weight
    Rhythm Types Trochaic
    Morphology
    Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Weakly prefixing
    Nominal Categories
    Definite Articles Definite word distinct from demonstrative
    Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns No gender distinctions
    Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns No politeness distinction
    Person Marking on Adpositions Pronouns only
    Position of Case Affixes No case affixes or adpositional clitics
    Distributive Numerals Marked by mixed or other strategies
    Numeral Classifiers Absent
    Conjunctions and Universal Quantifiers Formally similar, with interrogative
    Nominal Syntax
    Obligatory Possessive Inflection Absent
    Possessive Classification Two classes
    Genitives, Adjectives and Relative Clauses Adjectives and relative clauses collapsed
    Adjectives without Nouns Without marking
    Verbal Categories
    Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Tense-aspect prefixes
    Word Order
    Order of Subject, Object and Verb SOV
    Order of Subject and Verb SV
    Order of Object and Verb OV
    Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase No dominant order
    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
    Order of Degree Word and Adjective Adjective-Degree word
    Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause Mixed
    Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase Other
    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
    Alignment of Verbal Person Marking Accusative
    Verbal Person Marking Both the A and P arguments
    Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking No zero realization
    Order of Person Markers on the Verb A precedes P
    Passive Constructions Absent
    Negative Morphemes Negative particle
    Lexicon
    Numeral Bases Pure vigesimal