1. Family: Austronesian
  2. Subfamily: Western Malayo-Polynesian
  3. Genus: Yapese

Yapese

WALS coordinates: 9° 35′ N, 138° 10′ E

spoken in Micronesia

Alternative Names

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

      Features

      Feature Value References
      Phonology
      Consonant Inventories Average
      Vowel Quality Inventories Large (7-14)
      Consonant-Vowel Ratio Average
      Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives In plosives alone
      Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems None missing in /p t k b d g/
      Uvular Consonants None
      Glottalized Consonants Ejectives and glottalized resonants
      Lateral Consonants /l/, no obstruent laterals
      Front Rounded Vowels None
      Syllable Structure Moderately complex
      Tone No tones
      Fixed Stress Locations No fixed stress
      Weight-Sensitive Stress Right-edge: Ultimate or penultimate
      Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems Combined
      Rhythm Types Undetermined
      Absence of Common Consonants All present
      Presence of Uncommon Consonants 'Th' sounds
      Morphology
      Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Strongly suffixing
      Nominal Categories
      Coding of Nominal Plurality Plural word
      Definite Articles Definite word distinct from demonstrative
      Indefinite Articles Indefinite word distinct from 'one'
      Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns No gender distinctions
      Indefinite Pronouns Generic-noun-based
      Person Marking on Adpositions Pronouns only
      Position of Case Affixes No case affixes or adpositional clitics
      Numeral Classifiers Optional
      Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes Possessive suffixes
      Verbal Categories
      Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes No tense-aspect inflection
      The Morphological Imperative No second-person imperatives
      The Prohibitive Normal imperative + special negative
      Word Order
      Order of Subject, Object and Verb VSO
      Order of Subject and Verb VS
      Order of Object and Verb VO
      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 Numeral-Noun
      Order of Relative Clause and Noun Noun-Relative clause
      Order of Degree Word and Adjective Degree word-Adjective
      Position of Polar Question Particles No question particle
      Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions Mixed
      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 Accusative
      Verbal Person Marking Only the P argument
      Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking Zero in some 3sg forms
      Order of Person Markers on the Verb A and P do not or do not both occur on the verb
      Passive Constructions Absent
      Periphrastic Causative Constructions Sequential but no purposive
      Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions Morphological but no compound
      Negative Morphemes Negative particle
      Polar Questions Interrogative intonation only
      Comparative Constructions Locational
      Lexicon
      Hand and Arm Identical
      Finger and Hand Different