1. Family: Na-Dene
  2. Genus: Tlingit

Tlingit

WALS coordinates: 59° N, 135° W

spoken in United States

Alternative Names

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

      Features

      Feature Value References
      Phonology
      Consonant Inventories Large
      Vowel Quality Inventories Small (2-4)
      Consonant-Vowel Ratio High
      Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives No voicing constrast
      Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems Other
      Uvular Consonants Uvular stops and continuants
      Glottalized Consonants Ejectives only
      Lateral Consonants No /l/, but lateral obstruents
      The Velar Nasal No velar nasal
      Vowel Nasalization Contrast absent
      Front Rounded Vowels None
      Syllable Structure Complex
      Tone Simple tone system
      Absence of Common Consonants No bilabials
      Presence of Uncommon Consonants None
      Morphology
      Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives Exclusively concatenative
      Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives Monoexponential case
      Locus of Marking in the Clause Head marking
      Locus of Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases Head marking
      Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology Head-marking
      Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Equal prefixing and suffixing
      Case Syncretism No case marking
      Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking Not syncretic
      Nominal Categories
      Coding of Nominal Plurality Plural suffix
      Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns Person-number stem
      Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Independent Pronouns No inclusive/exclusive
      Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Verbal Inflection No inclusive/exclusive
      Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives Four-way contrast
      Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns No gender distinctions
      Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns No politeness distinction
      Person Marking on Adpositions Pronouns and nouns
      Number of Cases 8-9 cases
      Asymmetrical Case-Marking Additive-quantitatively asymmetrical
      Position of Case Affixes Case suffixes
      Comitatives and Instrumentals Differentiation
      Numeral Classifiers Obligatory
      Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes Possessive prefixes
      Nominal Syntax
      Obligatory Possessive Inflection Absent
      Possessive Classification Two classes
      Noun Phrase Conjunction 'And' different from 'with'
      Verbal Categories
      Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Mixed type
      The Morphological Imperative No second-person imperatives
      Situational Possibility Affixes on verbs
      Epistemic Possibility Other
      Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking No overlap
      Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality No grammatical evidentials
      Coding of Evidentiality No grammatical evidentials
      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 No dominant order
      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
      Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause Final subordinator word
      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 Other
      Simple Clauses
      Alignment of Verbal Person Marking Active
      Expression of Pronominal Subjects Subject affixes on verb
      Verbal Person Marking Both the A and P arguments
      Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking Zero in all 3rd person forms
      Order of Person Markers on the Verb P precedes A
      Passive Constructions Absent
      Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions Morphological but no compound
      Negative Morphemes Negative particle
      Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation Both
      Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation A/NonReal and A/Cat
      Predicative Adjectives Verbal encoding
      Nominal and Locational Predication Identical
      Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals Impossible
      Lexicon
      Numeral Bases Decimal
      M-T Pronouns No M-T pronouns
      N-M Pronouns No N-M pronouns