Typological Features Template for Konkomba
Revision as of 15:28, 18 November 2009 by Mary Steele (Talk | contribs)
by Mary Steele
| Feature | Description | |
| Phonological Features | In the following fields you describe the phonological inventory of Konkomba | |
| Vowel inventory | a, aa, e, ee, i, ii, u, uu, o, oo, ɔ, ɔɔ | |
| Vowel harmony | Konkomba does not have vowel harmony. | |
| Consonant inventory | p, t, ch, f, b, d, g, gb, k, kp, p, h, j, l, m, n, ŋ, ŋm, r, s, w, y | |
| Tone | In this field you indicate if Konkomba is a tone language and which tones are used; does Konkombahave lexical tone? | Yes, but tones are not marked in the orthography. Some minimal tone pairs are marked by spelling, using a silent letter /h/ |
| Syllable Structure | In this field you indicate the basic syllable structures of Konkomba | cv, cvv, cvc, cvvc, v, vv |
| In the following fields you describe some of the basic morpho-syntactic parameters of [your language] | ||
| morphological classification (1) | [Your language] could be an isolating language (not (or nearly not) making use of morphology, agglutinative, such as the Bantu languages of Africa, or synthetic, such as the Saami languages of Scandinavia, or even polysynthetic such as Greenlandic. In this field you classify [your language] according to these parameters if possible. | |
| 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 | linear order of elements in the noun phrase | N-ADJ/NUM-DET |
| In this field you indicate the basic types of nominal modification (adjectives, relative clauses, adpositions...) | There are few adjectives in Konkomba. Often the Adjective is fused with the noun as a suffix, agreeing with the class of the noun.
The relative clause normally follows the head noun. The relative pronoun agrees with the noun it modifies in class and number. | |
| 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 expressing a portion of a noun that they 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? Possession is expressed by a possessive/associative particle which immediately follows the possessor and is affixed to the possessed element, replacing the class prefix (if present)of the possessed element. Konkomba distinguishes alienable and inalienable possession. | |
| 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] | In this field you should mention properties of [your language] which did not fit into any of the other categories mentioned in this template |