Zulu
WALS coordinates: 30° S, 30° E
spoken in South Africa
Find examples here.
Alternative Names
| Ethnologue: | |
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| Ruhlen: |
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| Routledge: |
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| Other: |
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| ISO 639-3: |
Features
| ID | Feature | Value | Area | References | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1A | Consonant Inventories | Moderately large | Phonology | comment | |
| 2A | Vowel Quality Inventories | Average (5-6) | Phonology | comment | |
| 3A | Consonant-Vowel Ratio | High | Phonology | comment | |
| 4A | Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives | In fricatives alone | Phonology | comment | |
| 5A | Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems | Other | Phonology | comment | |
| 6A | Uvular Consonants | None | Phonology | comment | |
| 7A | Glottalized Consonants | Ejectives and implosives | Phonology | comment | |
| 8A | Lateral Consonants | /l/ and lateral obstruent | Phonology | comment | |
| 10A | Vowel Nasalization | Contrast absent | Phonology | comment | |
| 11A | Front Rounded Vowels | None | Phonology | comment | |
| 12A | Syllable Structure | Moderately complex | Phonology | comment | |
| 13A | Tone | Simple tone system | Phonology | comment | |
| 14A | Fixed Stress Locations | Penultimate | Phonology | comment | |
| 15A | Weight-Sensitive Stress | Fixed stress (no weight-sensitivity) | Phonology | comment | |
| 16A | Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems | No weight | Phonology | comment | |
| 17A | Rhythm Types | Trochaic | Phonology | comment | |
| 18A | Absence of Common Consonants | All present | Phonology | comment | |
| 19A | Presence of Uncommon Consonants | Clicks | Phonology | comment | |
| 20A | Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives | Exclusively concatenative | Morphology | comment | |
| 21A | Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives | No case | Morphology | comment | |
| 21B | Exponence of Tense-Aspect-Mood Inflection | monoexponential TAM | Morphology | comment | |
| 22A | Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb | 4-5 categories per word | Morphology | comment | |
| 23A | Locus of Marking in the Clause | Head marking | Morphology | comment | |
| 24A | Locus of Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases | Dependent marking | Morphology | comment | |
| 25A | Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology | Inconsistent or other | Morphology | comment | |
| 25B | Zero Marking of A and P Arguments | Non-zero marking | Morphology | comment | |
| 26A | Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology | Strong prefixing | Morphology | comment | |
| 27A | Reduplication | Full reduplication only | Morphology | comment | |
| 28A | Case Syncretism | No case marking | Morphology | comment | |
| 29A | Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking | Syncretic | Morphology | comment | |
| 30A | Number of Genders | Five or more | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 31A | Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems | Non-sex-based | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 32A | Systems of Gender Assignment | Semantic and formal | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 33A | Coding of Nominal Plurality | Plural prefix | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 34A | Occurrence of Nominal Plurality | All nouns, always obligatory | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 35A | Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns | Person-number stem | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 36A | The Associative Plural | Associative same as additive plural | Nominal Categories |
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examples |
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| 37A | Definite Articles | No definite or indefinite article | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 38A | Indefinite Articles | No definite or indefinite article | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 39A | Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Independent Pronouns | No inclusive/exclusive | Nominal Categories |
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examples |
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| 40A | Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Verbal Inflection | No inclusive/exclusive | Nominal Categories |
comment
examples |
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| 43A | Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives | Related by gender markers | Nominal Categories |
comment
examples |
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| 44A | Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns | 3rd person only, but also non-singular | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 45A | Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns | No politeness distinction | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 47A | Intensifiers and Reflexive Pronouns | Differentiated | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 48A | Person Marking on Adpositions | No person marking | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 49A | Number of Cases | No morphological case-marking | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 50A | Asymmetrical Case-Marking | No case-marking | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 51A | Position of Case Affixes | Case prefixes | Nominal Categories |
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examples |
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| 53A | Ordinal Numerals | First, two-th, three-th | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 55A | Numeral Classifiers | Absent | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 56A | Conjunctions and Universal Quantifiers | Formally similar, without interrogative | 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 | |
| 60A | Genitives, Adjectives and Relative Clauses | Highly differentiated | Nominal Syntax | comment | |
| 61A | Adjectives without Nouns | Without marking | Nominal Syntax | comment | |
| 63A | Noun Phrase Conjunction | 'And' identical to 'with' | Nominal Syntax | comment | |
| 64A | Nominal and Verbal Conjunction | Differentiation | Nominal Syntax | comment | |
| 65A | Perfective/Imperfective Aspect | Grammatical marking | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 66A | The Past Tense | Present, 2-3 remoteness distinctions | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 67A | The Future Tense | Inflectional future exists | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 68A | The Perfect | Other perfect | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 69A | Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes | Tense-aspect prefixes | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 70A | The Morphological Imperative | Second singular and second plural | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 71A | The Prohibitive | Special imperative + special negative | Verbal Categories |
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examples |
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| 72A | Imperative-Hortative Systems | Maximal system | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 73A | The Optative | Inflectional optative absent | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 74A | Situational Possibility | Affixes on verbs | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 75A | Epistemic Possibility | Affixes on verbs | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 76A | Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking | Overlap for either possibility or necessity | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 77A | Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality | No grammatical evidentials | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 78A | Coding of Evidentiality | No grammatical evidentials | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 79A | Suppletion According to Tense and Aspect | None | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 79B | Suppletion in Imperatives and Hortatives | None (= no suppletive imperatives reported in the reference material) | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 80A | Verbal Number and Suppletion | None | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 81A | Order of Subject, Object and Verb | SVO | Word Order | comment | |
| 82A | Order of Subject and Verb | SV | Word Order | comment | |
| 83A | Order of Object and Verb | VO | Word Order | comment | |
| 85A | Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase | Prepositions | Word Order | comment | |
| 86A | Order of Genitive and Noun | Noun-Genitive | Word Order | comment | |
| 87A | Order of Adjective and Noun | Noun-Adjective | Word Order | comment | |
| 88A | Order of Demonstrative and Noun | Mixed | Word Order | comment | |
| 90A | Order of Relative Clause and Noun | Noun-Relative clause | Word Order | comment | |
| 90C | Postnominal relative clauses | Noun-Relative clause (NRel) dominant | Word Order | comment | |
| 92A | Position of Polar Question Particles | Final | Word Order | comment | |
| 93A | Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions | Not initial interrogative phrase | Word Order | comment | |
| 94A | Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause | Initial subordinator word | Word Order | comment | |
| 95A | Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase | VO and Prepositions | Word Order | comment | |
| 96A | Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun | VO and NRel | Word Order | comment | |
| 97A | Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun | VO and NAdj | Word Order | comment | |
| 98A | Alignment of Case Marking of Full Noun Phrases | Neutral | Simple Clauses |
comment
examples |
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| 99A | Alignment of Case Marking of Pronouns | Neutral | Simple Clauses |
comment
examples |
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| 100A | Alignment of Verbal Person Marking | Accusative | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 101A | Expression of Pronominal Subjects | Subject affixes on verb | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 102A | Verbal Person Marking | Both the A and P arguments | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 103A | Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking | No zero realization | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 104A | Order of Person Markers on the Verb | A precedes P | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 105A | Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give' | Double-object construction | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 106A | Reciprocal Constructions | Distinct from reflexive | Simple Clauses |
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examples |
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| 107A | Passive Constructions | Present | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 108A | Antipassive Constructions | No antipassive | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 108B | Productivity of the Antipassive Construction | no antipassive | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 109A | Applicative Constructions | Benefactive and other; both bases | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 109B | Other Roles of Applied Objects | Instrument | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 110A | Periphrastic Causative Constructions | Purposive but no sequential | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 111A | Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions | Morphological but no compound | 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 | |
| 115A | Negative Indefinite Pronouns and Predicate Negation | Predicate negation also present | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 116A | Polar Questions | Question particle | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 117A | Predicative Possession | Conjunctional | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 118A | Predicative Adjectives | Mixed | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 119A | Nominal and Locational Predication | Identical | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 120A | Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals | Impossible | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 121A | Comparative Constructions | Exceed | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 122A | Relativization on Subjects | Gap | Complex Sentences | comment | |
| 124A | 'Want' Complement Subjects | Subject is left implicit | Complex Sentences |
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examples |
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| 125A | Purpose Clauses | Deranked | Complex Sentences | comment | |
| 126A | 'When' Clauses | Deranked | Complex Sentences | comment | |
| 127A | Reason Clauses | Deranked | Complex Sentences | comment | |
| 129A | Hand and Arm | Different | Lexicon |
comment
examples |
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| 130A | Finger and Hand | Different | Lexicon |
comment
examples |
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| 131A | Numeral Bases | Decimal | Lexicon |
comment
examples |
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| 136A | M-T Pronouns | No M-T pronouns | Lexicon | comment | |
| 136B | M in First Person Singular | 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 | Others | Lexicon |
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examples |
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| 143A | Order of Negative Morpheme and Verb | OptDoubleNeg | Word Order | comment | |
| 143C | Optional Double Negation | [Neg-V(-Neg)] | Word Order | comment | |
| 143E | Preverbal Negative Morphemes | [Neg-V] | Word Order | comment | |
| 143F | Postverbal Negative Morphemes | [V-Neg] | 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 | |
| 144D | The Position of Negative Morphemes in SVO Languages | OptNeg | Word Order | comment | |
| 144G | Optional Double Negation in SVO languages | S[Neg-V(-Neg)]O | Word Order | comment | |
| 144H | NegSVO Order | No NegSVO | Word Order | comment | |
| 144I | SNegVO Order | Prefix&OptDoubleNeg | Word Order | comment | |
| 144J | SVNegO Order | Suffix&OnlyWithAnotherNeg | Word Order | comment | |
| 144K | SVONeg Order | No SVONeg | Word Order | comment |
