Usan

WALS coordinates: 4° 50′ S, 145° 10′ E

spoken in Papua New Guinea

Alternative Names

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

Features

Feature Value References
Phonology
Consonant Inventories Small
Vowel Quality Inventories Average (5-6)
Consonant-Vowel Ratio Moderately low
Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives In plosives alone
Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems Other
Uvular Consonants None
Glottalized Consonants No glottalized consonants
Lateral Consonants No laterals
The Velar Nasal No velar nasal
Vowel Nasalization Contrast absent
Front Rounded Vowels None
Syllable Structure Moderately complex
Tone No tones
Fixed Stress Locations No fixed stress
Weight-Sensitive Stress Not predictable
Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems Lexical stress
Absence of Common Consonants All present
Presence of Uncommon Consonants None
Morphology
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
Case Syncretism No case marking
Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking Syncretic
Nominal Categories
Number of Genders None
Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems No gender
Systems of Gender Assignment No gender
Occurrence of Nominal Plurality No nominal plural
Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns Person-number stem
Definite Articles Demonstrative word used as definite article
Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Independent Pronouns No inclusive/exclusive
Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Verbal Inflection No inclusive/exclusive
Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives Unrelated
Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns No gender distinctions
Indefinite Pronouns Generic-noun-based
Intensifiers and Reflexive Pronouns Differentiated
Person Marking on Adpositions Pronouns only
Number of Cases Exclusively borderline case-marking
Asymmetrical Case-Marking Additive-quantitatively asymmetrical
Ordinal Numerals Various
Nominal Syntax
Noun Phrase Conjunction 'And' different from 'with'
Nominal and Verbal Conjunction Identity
Verbal Categories
Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Tense-aspect suffixes
The Optative Inflectional optative absent
Situational Possibility Affixes on verbs
Epistemic Possibility Affixes on verbs
Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking No overlap
Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality No grammatical evidentials
Coding of Evidentiality No grammatical evidentials
Suppletion According to Tense and Aspect Tense
Verbal Number and Suppletion Singular-plural pairs, suppletion
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 Noun-Adjective
Order of Demonstrative and Noun Noun-Demonstrative
Order of Numeral and Noun Noun-Numeral
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
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 Adjective and Noun OV and NAdj
Simple Clauses
Alignment of Case Marking of Full Noun Phrases Neutral
Alignment of Case Marking of Pronouns Neutral
Alignment of Verbal Person Marking Accusative
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' Secondary-object construction
Passive Constructions Absent
Antipassive Constructions No antipassive
Applicative Constructions Benefactive object; both bases
Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions Morphological but no compound
Negative Morphemes Negative particle
Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation Both
Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation A/Fin and A/NonReal
Polar Questions Interrogative intonation only
Predicative Possession Topic
Predicative Adjectives Nonverbal encoding
Nominal and Locational Predication Identical
Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals Possible
Complex Sentences
Relativization on Subjects Non-reduction
Relativization on Obliques Non-reduction
Lexicon
M-T Pronouns M-T pronouns, paradigmatic
N-M Pronouns No N-M pronouns