Feature
|
Description This page will be further developed mid-2010
|
Phonological Features
|
|
Vowel inventory
|
|
Vowel harmony
|
In this field you describe rule based assimilations involving vowels in [your language]
|
Consonant inventory
|
In this field you describe the consonants of [your language]
|
Tone
|
There appear to be two tones, plus a high-low falling tone on some word-final syllables.
|
Syllable Structure
|
Syllable types include CV, V and N. V and N syllables occur only as grammatical markers.
|
Morpho-syntactic Features
|
In the following fields you describe some of the basic morpho-syntactic parameters of [your language]
|
morphological classification (1)
|
This is a moderately agglutinative language, with nominal prefixes marking singular and plural
|
morphological classification (2)
|
Linguists have distinguished between head- and dependent-marking languages. Semitic languages are head marking languages; it is the head of the noun phrases that needs to have a special form when followed by a dependent noun; in the Germanic languages it is the head of the verb phrase that expresses person-number features of its subject. Grammatical dependencies on the other hand are in some of the Germanic languages expressed on the dependent noun phrases in form of case. [Your language] might be both, head- and dependent-marking, depending on the category of speech and or the type of feature expressed. This is what you can describe in this field.
|
Nominal Phrases
|
In the following fields follows a description of some of the basic morpho-syntactic properties of nominal constituents
|
syntactic structure
|
In this field you describe the linear order of elements in the noun phrase
|
nominal modification
|
In this field you indicate the basic types of nominal modification (adjectives, relative clauses, adpositions...)
|
nominal specification
|
In this field you indicate the basic types of specification. Does [your language] have determiners, demonstratives (deixis), numerals, quantifiers. Are there affixes expressing reference, deixis. Are there nouns or other elements expression a portion of a noun that the co-occur with?
|
possession
|
In this field you describe how possession is expressed (for example, syntactically or by use of prepositions, through juxtaposition or morphologically) Does [your language] feature possessive pronouns?
|
pronominal system
|
In this field you indicate if [your language] has free pronoun forms? Are pronouns marked for their grammatical function (object versus subject pronouns)? Does your language have bound pronouns (affixes) or pronoun doubling? Are reflexives expressed by pronouns?
|
Verbal Phrases
|
In the following fields serve for the description of some of the basic morpho-syntactic properties of verbal constituents
|
word order
|
In this field you indicate the basic word order of your language (SOV, SOV ...)
|
TAM
|
In this field you indicate which tense and/or aspects are morphologically or tonally marked; does [your language] make use of periphrastic tense or aspect constructions?
|
infinitival forms
|
In this field you indicate if [your language] makes use of an infinitive marker? How many infinitival forms does your language have?
|
verbal constructions
|
In this field you indicate if [your language] has ditransitive constructions, serial verb constructions or complex verb forms composed of several verbs. Does your language have so called light verbs, perhaps only used to indicate a certain tense or aspect?
|
Adpositions
|
In this field you indicate if [your language[ makes use of prepositions or postpositions. Does your language have spatial nouns? Does your language use adpositions or particles to indicate grammatical relations between the verb and a nominal argument?
|
Complementation
|
In this field you describe complementation strategies. Does [your language] make use of complementizers?
|
Special Properties of [your language]
|
This North Guang language is almost if not entirely extinct and has no ISO or Ethnologue number. Information here is based on a short wordlist collected at Kpalangase (Northern Region, Ghana) in 2007.
|