1. Family: Nilo-Saharan
  2. Subfamily: Eastern Sudanic
  3. Genus: Nilotic

Turkana

WALS coordinates: 3° N, 35° 30′ E

spoken in Kenya, Uganda

Alternative Names

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

      Features

      Feature Value References
      Morphology
      Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Strong prefixing
      Nominal Categories
      Coding of Nominal Plurality Mixed morphological plural
      Definite Articles No definite or indefinite article
      Indefinite Articles No definite or indefinite article
      Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives Two-way contrast
      Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives Unrelated
      Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns No gender distinctions
      Intensifiers and Reflexive Pronouns Identical
      Person Marking on Adpositions No person marking
      Number of Cases 6-7 cases
      Asymmetrical Case-Marking Subtractive-quantitatively asymmetrical
      Position of Case Affixes Mixed morphological case
      Ordinal Numerals First, two-th, three-th
      Nominal Syntax
      Noun Phrase Conjunction 'And' identical to 'with'
      Verbal Categories
      Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Mixed type
      The Morphological Imperative Second singular and second plural
      The Prohibitive Special imperative + normal negative
      Suppletion According to Tense and Aspect Tense
      Verbal Number and Suppletion None
      Word Order
      Order of Subject, Object and Verb VSO
      Order of Subject and Verb VS
      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
      Alignment of Verbal Person Marking Split
      Expression of Pronominal Subjects Subject affixes on verb
      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 P precedes A
      Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give' Double-object construction
      Passive Constructions Present
      Periphrastic Causative Constructions Sequential but no purposive
      Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions Morphological but no compound
      Negative Morphemes Negative affix
      Polar Questions Question particle
      Predicative Possession Topic
      Predicative Adjectives Verbal encoding
      Nominal and Locational Predication Different
      Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals Possible
      Lexicon
      Hand and Arm Identical
      Finger and Hand Different