1. Family: Afro-Asiatic
  2. Subfamily: Chadic
  3. Genus: Biu-Mandara

Tera

WALS coordinates: 11° N, 11° 49′ 48.00″ E

spoken in Nigeria

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Tera
Routledge:
    Other:
    • Tera, Wuyo dialect
    ISO 639-3:

    Features

    Feature Value References
    Phonology
    Consonant Inventories Large
    Vowel Quality Inventories Average (5-6)
    Consonant-Vowel Ratio High
    Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives In both plosives and fricatives
    Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems None missing in /p t k b d g/
    Uvular Consonants None
    Glottalized Consonants Implosives only
    Lateral Consonants /l/ and lateral obstruent
    Front Rounded Vowels None
    Syllable Structure Moderately complex
    Tone Complex tone system
    Absence of Common Consonants All present
    Presence of Uncommon Consonants None
    Morphology
    Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives Exclusively isolating
    Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives No case
    Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Strongly suffixing
    Nominal Categories
    Coding of Nominal Plurality Plural clitic
    Position of Case Affixes No case affixes or adpositional clitics
    Comitatives and Instrumentals Identity
    Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes Possessive suffixes
    Nominal Syntax
    Obligatory Possessive Inflection Absent
    Possessive Classification Two classes
    Noun Phrase Conjunction 'And' identical to 'with'
    Verbal Categories
    Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes No tense-aspect inflection
    The Morphological Imperative Second singular and second plural
    The Prohibitive Special imperative + normal negative
    Word Order
    Order of Subject, Object and Verb SVO
    Order of Subject and Verb SV
    Order of Object and Verb VO
    Order of Object, Oblique, and Verb VOX
    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 Noun-Demonstrative
    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
    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
    Negative Morphemes Negative particle
    Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation Both
    Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation A/Cat
    Polar Questions Question particle
    Predicative Possession Conjunctional
    Other
    Para-Linguistic Usages of Clicks Affective meanings