1. Family: Dravidian
  2. Genus: South-Central Dravidian

Telugu

WALS coordinates: 16° N, 79° E

spoken in India

Alternative Names

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

      Features

      Feature Value References
      Phonology
      Consonant Inventories Moderately large
      Vowel Quality Inventories Average (5-6)
      Consonant-Vowel Ratio Moderately high
      Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives In plosives alone
      Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems None missing in /p t k b d g/
      Uvular Consonants None
      Glottalized Consonants No glottalized consonants
      Lateral Consonants /l/, no obstruent laterals
      Front Rounded Vowels None
      Syllable Structure Moderately complex
      Tone No tones
      Absence of Common Consonants All present
      Presence of Uncommon Consonants None
      Morphology
      Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Strongly suffixing
      Nominal Categories
      Coding of Nominal Plurality Plural suffix
      Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns Person-number stem
      Intensifiers and Reflexive Pronouns Identical
      Position of Case Affixes Case suffixes
      Comitatives and Instrumentals Differentiation
      Conjunctions and Universal Quantifiers Formally similar, with interrogative
      Verbal Categories
      Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Tense-aspect suffixes
      The Morphological Imperative Second singular and second plural
      The Prohibitive Normal imperative + special negative
      The Optative Inflectional optative absent
      Situational Possibility Verbal constructions
      Epistemic Possibility Verbal constructions
      Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking Overlap for both possibility and necessity
      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 Postpositions
      Order of Genitive and Noun Genitive-Noun
      Order of Adjective and Noun Adjective-Noun
      Order of Demonstrative and Noun Demonstrative-Noun
      Order of Numeral and Noun Numeral-Noun
      Order of Relative Clause and Noun Relative clause-Noun
      Order of Degree Word and Adjective Degree word-Adjective
      Position of Polar Question Particles No question particle
      Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions Not initial interrogative phrase
      Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause Mixed
      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 RelN
      Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun OV and AdjN
      Simple Clauses
      Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions Morphological but no compound
      Negative Morphemes Negative affix
      Polar Questions Interrogative verb morphology
      Predicative Adjectives Nonverbal encoding
      Nominal and Locational Predication Identical
      Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals Possible
      Comparative Constructions Locational
      Lexicon
      Numeral Bases Decimal
      Tea Words derived from Min Nan Chinese te
      Other
      Para-Linguistic Usages of Clicks Logical meanings