WALS Poll Conlang/Syntax

Numerals

Distributive numerals are marked with a following word. There are optional numeral classifiers.

Conjunctions and universal quantifiers are different.

Possessors are marked with suffixes. Obligatorily possessed nouns exist.

Two classes of possession markers exist.

Genitives, adjectives and relative clauses are moderately differentiated. Adjectives and relative clauses collapse. Adjectives can be used without nouns when marked with a suffix. Action nominals have only one argument.

"And" and "with" have the same form in noun phrases. Nominal and verbal conjunction are marked differently.

The language distinguishes imperfective and perfective aspects.

The language has a past tense without remoteness distinctions.

Future tense is marked on the verb.

The perfect is derived fron after or finished.

Tense/aspect markers are suffixes.

The 2nd person singular and plural have marked imperatives.

The prohibitive is formed from the imperative, with a different negation marker from declaratives.

Hortatives exist for all persons, and are marked differently from imperatives.

There is an optative.

Situational possibility is expressed by a verbal affix.

Epistemic possibility is expressed by a verbal construction.

Indirect evidentials only. Evidentials are part of the tense system.

There is suppletion according to aspect.

There are singular, dual and plural verbal numbers, with suppletion.

There are two prominent word orders.

Subjects precede verbs. Objects precede verbs. The order of object, oblique and verb is OXV.

The language has postpositions.

The order of the genitive and the noun is genitive / noun. Adjectives precede nouns. Demonstratives are words which precede nouns. Numerals occur before nouns. Relative clauses follow nouns. Degree words precede adjectives.

Polar question particles occur in second position.

It is obligatory for interrogative phrases to be initial in certain types of questions, but not all.

Adverbial subordinators are words at the end of the clause.

Full nouns have nominative/accusative allignment.

Pronouns have ergative/accusative allignment.

Verbal person marking has nominative allignment.

Pronominal subjects are clitics with variable hosts.

All third person singular subjects are unmarked on the verb.

Subject and object markers are fused.

Ditransitive sentences use a secondary object construction.

Reciprocals are distinct from reflexives.

There is a passive.

Antipassives exist, and the demoted object is left implicit.

Benefactive applicatives exist with transitive bases.

Both sequential and purposive periphrastic causitivess exist.

Both morphological and compound causatives exist.

A negative word may be used as an alternative to morphological negation.

Standard negation is asymmetric. Standard negation is asymmetric in finiteness.

The language uses negative existential constructions.

Verbs have interrogative morphology.

Predicate posession is marked with a genitive construction.

Predicate adjectives have non-verbal encoding.

Nominal and locative predicates are marked with the same strategy.

Null copulas are possible.

The language uses locational comparative constructions.

Subjects are relativised with a non-reduction strategy.

Obliques are relativised with a non-reduction strategy.

"Want" is a particle.

The verb forms used in complement clauses may be either balanced or deranked.

Verbs in "when" clauses may be either balanced or deranked.

Verbs in reason clauses are balanced.

Verbs in utterance complement clauses are balanced.

Lexicon

The words for "hand" and "arm" are different. "Hand" and "finger" are the same word.

The language has a counting system with a base other than 10 or 20.

There are 5 non-derived basic colour terms. There are 10 or more basic colour terms in total. Blue and green are the same, blue is different from black, and yellow is different from green. Red and yellow are different.

There are no M-T pronouns, nor N-M pronouns.

The word for tea is derived from cha.

The writing system is alphasyllabic.

Other

Clicks may express affective but not logical meanings.