Genitives, Adjectives and Relative Clauses
Noun phrases · one world map for each value
WALS codes 138 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “Highly differentiated”, covers 77 of them (56%); the least frequent, “Genitives and relative clauses collapsed”, covers 2.
That value is most frequent in South America (82% of the 17 languages coded there) and least frequent in Papunesia (26% of 27).
Among families with at least eight coded languages, Afro-Asiatic is the most uniform: 7 of 10 have “Highly differentiated”.
Sino-Tibetan is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 5 of 11.
Weakly differentiated15 languages · 11%
Genitives and adjectives collapsed8 languages · 6%
Genitives and relative clauses collapsed2 languages · 1%
Adjectives and relative clauses collapsed33 languages · 24%
Moderately differentiated; other3 languages · 2%
Highly differentiated77 languages · 56%
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weakly differentiated | 2 | 7 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Genitives and adjectives collapsed | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Genitives and relative clauses collapsed | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Adjectives and relative clauses collapsed | 6 | 8 | 14 | 2 | 3 | 0 |
| Moderately differentiated; other | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Highly differentiated | 17 | 31 | 7 | 6 | 2 | 14 |
| All values | 26 | 55 | 27 | 8 | 5 | 17 |
Inside the largest families
| Family | Coded | Most frequent value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austronesian | 21 | Adjectives and relative clauses collapsed | 52% |
| Indo-European | 12 | Highly differentiated | 67% |
| Sino-Tibetan | 11 | Highly differentiated | 45% |
| Afro-Asiatic | 10 | Highly differentiated | 70% |
Languages to explore
The most fully coded languages with each value.
- Weakly differentiated: Indonesian, Mandarin, Lango, Maybrat, Khmer, Semelai
- Genitives and adjectives collapsed: Japanese, Persian, Yagua
- Genitives and relative clauses collapsed: Burmese
- Adjectives and relative clauses collapsed: Amele, Tagalog, Malagasy, Maori, Vietnamese, Fijian
- Moderately differentiated; other: Thai, Batak (Karo), Mupun
- Highly differentiated: English, French, Russian, Finnish, Turkish, Hungarian