Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives
Word structure · one world map for each value
WALS codes 162 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “No case”, covers 75 of them (46%); the least frequent, “Case + TAM (tense-aspect-mood)”, covers 2.
That value is most frequent in Papunesia (71% of the 24 languages coded there) and least frequent in Eurasia (20% of 45).
All 9 Sino-Tibetan languages coded have “Monoexponential case”.
Indo-European is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 3 of 8.
Monoexponential case71 languages · 44%
Case + number8 languages · 5%
Case + referentiality6 languages · 4%
Case + TAM (tense-aspect-mood)2 languages · 1%
No case75 languages · 46%
One map per value; each dot is a language WALS codes with that value.
By macro-area
| Value | Africa | Eurasia | Papunesia | Australia | North America | South America |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monoexponential case | 10 | 28 | 4 | 9 | 11 | 9 |
| Case + number | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Case + referentiality | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Case + TAM (tense-aspect-mood) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| No case | 16 | 9 | 17 | 3 | 17 | 13 |
| All values | 27 | 45 | 24 | 13 | 31 | 22 |
Inside the largest families
| Family | Coded | Most frequent value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austronesian | 10 | No case | 40% |
| Sino-Tibetan | 9 | Monoexponential case | 100% |
| Afro-Asiatic | 8 | No case | 62% |
| Indo-European | 8 | Monoexponential case | 38% |
| Niger-Congo | 8 | No case | 88% |
Languages to explore
The most fully coded languages with each value.
- Monoexponential case: Spanish, Turkish, Mandarin, Hungarian, Japanese, Georgian
- Case + number: Russian, Finnish, German, Greek (Modern), Greenlandic (West), Chukchi
- Case + referentiality: Evenki, Tagalog, Tukang Besi, Kutenai, Paiwan, Cree (Plains)
- Case + TAM (tense-aspect-mood): Kayardild, Lugbara
- No case: English, French, Indonesian, Amele, Abkhaz, Hausa
From the same chapter
- Exponence of Tense-Aspect-Mood Inflection 160 languages