Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb
Word structure · one world map for each value
WALS codes 145 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “4-5 categories per word”, covers 52 of them (36%); the least frequent, “12-13 categories per word”, covers 2.
That value is most frequent in South America (43% of the 21 languages coded there) and least frequent in Africa (29% of 21).
Among families with at least eight coded languages, Indo-European is the most uniform: 5 of 9 have “4-5 categories per word”.
Niger-Congo is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 2 of 8.
0-1 category per word5 languages · 3%
2-3 categories per word24 languages · 17%
4-5 categories per word52 languages · 36%
6-7 categories per word31 languages · 21%
8-9 categories per word24 languages · 17%
10-11 categories per word7 languages · 5%
12-13 categories per word2 languages · 1%
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0-1 category per word | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2-3 categories per word | 3 | 16 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 4-5 categories per word | 6 | 16 | 6 | 5 | 10 | 9 |
| 6-7 categories per word | 10 | 7 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| 8-9 categories per word | 1 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 9 | 7 |
| 10-11 categories per word | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| 12-13 categories per word | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| All values | 21 | 49 | 19 | 8 | 27 | 21 |
Inside the largest families
| Family | Coded | Most frequent value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indo-European | 9 | 4-5 categories per word | 56% |
| Sino-Tibetan | 9 | 2-3 categories per word | 33% |
| Austronesian | 8 | 4-5 categories per word | 38% |
| Niger-Congo | 8 | 2-3 categories per word | 25% |
Languages to explore
The most fully coded languages with each value.
- 0-1 category per word: Mandarin, Vietnamese, Maybrat, Sango
- 2-3 categories per word: English, Finnish, Lezgian, German, Tagalog, Kannada
- 4-5 categories per word: French, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian, Hungarian, Japanese
- 6-7 categories per word: Turkish, Amele, Korean, Evenki, Hausa, Arabic (Egyptian)
- 8-9 categories per word: Georgian, Slave, Burushaski, Mapudungun, Pirahã, Rapanui
- 10-11 categories per word: Abkhaz, Lakhota, Alamblak, Imonda, Yagua, Ingush
- 12-13 categories per word: Koasati, Wichita