1. Family: Sino-Tibetan
  2. Subfamily: Tibeto-Burman
  3. Genus: Bodic

Tibetan (Standard Spoken)

WALS coordinates: 30° N, 91° E

spoken in China

Find examples here.

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Tibetan (Central)
Routledge:
  • Tibetan
Other:
  • Tibetan, Lhasa dialect,
  • Tibetan (Lhasa)
ISO 639-3:

Features

ID Feature Value Area References  
1A Consonant Inventories Large Phonology
comment
2A Vowel Quality Inventories Large (7-14) Phonology
comment
3A Consonant-Vowel Ratio Average Phonology
comment
4A Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives In plosives alone Phonology
comment
5A Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems None missing in /p t k b d g/ Phonology
comment
6A Uvular Consonants None Phonology
comment
7A Glottalized Consonants No glottalized consonants Phonology
comment
8A Lateral Consonants /l/, no obstruent laterals Phonology
comment
11A Front Rounded Vowels High and mid Phonology
comment
12A Syllable Structure Moderately complex Phonology
comment
13A Tone Simple tone system Phonology
comment
14A Fixed Stress Locations No fixed stress Phonology
comment
15A Weight-Sensitive Stress Unbounded: Stress can be anywhere Phonology
comment
16A Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems Long vowel Phonology
comment
18A Absence of Common Consonants All present Phonology
comment
19A Presence of Uncommon Consonants None Phonology
comment
20A Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives Exclusively concatenative Morphology
comment
21A Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives Monoexponential case Morphology
comment
21B Exponence of Tense-Aspect-Mood Inflection TAM+agreement Morphology
comment
22A Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb 4-5 categories per word Morphology
comment
23A Locus of Marking in the Clause Dependent marking Morphology
comment
24A Locus of Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases Dependent marking Morphology
comment
25A Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology Dependent-marking Morphology
comment
25B Zero Marking of A and P Arguments Non-zero marking Morphology
comment
30A Number of Genders None Nominal Categories
comment
31A Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems No gender Nominal Categories
comment
32A Systems of Gender Assignment No gender Nominal Categories
comment
34A Occurrence of Nominal Plurality All nouns, always optional Nominal Categories
comment
35A Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns Person stem + nominal plural affix Nominal Categories
comment
43A Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives Unrelated Nominal Categories
comment
examples
45A Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns Binary politeness distinction Nominal Categories
comment
examples
54A Distributive Numerals Marked by reduplication Nominal Categories
comment
58A Obligatory Possessive Inflection Absent Nominal Syntax
comment
58B Number of Possessive Nouns None reported Nominal Syntax
comment
59A Possessive Classification No possessive classification Nominal Syntax
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
86A Order of Genitive and Noun Genitive-Noun Word Order
comment
87A Order of Adjective and Noun Noun-Adjective Word Order
comment
88A Order of Demonstrative and Noun Noun-Demonstrative Word Order
comment
89A Order of Numeral and Noun Noun-Numeral Word Order
comment
90A Order of Relative Clause and Noun Relative clause-Noun Word Order
comment
90B Prenominal relative clauses Relative clause-Noun (RelN) dominant Word Order
comment
91A Order of Degree Word and Adjective Adjective-Degree word Word Order
comment
92A Position of Polar Question Particles Final Word Order
comment
94A Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause Final subordinator word Word Order
comment
96A Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun OV and RelN 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
105A Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give' Indirect-object construction Simple Clauses
comment
110A Periphrastic Causative Constructions Purposive but no sequential Simple Clauses
comment
111A Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions Neither Simple Clauses
comment
112A Negative Morphemes Negative affix Simple Clauses
comment
113A Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation Both Simple Clauses
comment
114A Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation A/Cat Simple Clauses
comment
116A Polar Questions Question particle Simple Clauses
comment
124A 'Want' Complement Subjects Subject is left implicit Complex Sentences
comment
129A Hand and Arm Identical Lexicon
comment
130A Finger and Hand Different Lexicon
comment
136A M-T Pronouns No M-T pronouns Lexicon
comment
136B M in First Person Singular No m in first person singular Lexicon
comment
137A N-M Pronouns No N-M pronouns Lexicon
comment
137B M in Second Person Singular No m in second person singular Lexicon
comment
138A Tea Words derived from Sinitic cha Lexicon
comment
examples
143A Order of Negative Morpheme and Verb [Neg-V] Word Order
comment
143E Preverbal Negative Morphemes [Neg-V] 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 MorphNeg Word Order
comment
144L The Position of Negative Morphemes in SOV Languages SO[Neg-V] Word Order
comment
144P NegSOV Order No NegSOV Word Order
comment
144Q SNegOV Order No SNegOV Word Order
comment
144R SONegV Order Prefix&NoDoubleNeg Word Order
comment
144S SOVNeg Order NoSOVNeg Word Order
comment