Obligatory Possessive Inflection
Noun phrases · one world map for each value
WALS codes 244 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “No obligatorily possessed nouns”, covers 201 of them (82%); the least frequent, “Obligatorily possessed nouns exist”, covers 43.
That value is most frequent in Africa (98% of the 41 languages coded there) and least frequent in North America (53% of 45).
All 11 Afro-Asiatic languages coded have “No obligatorily possessed nouns”.
Trans-New Guinea is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 14 of 17.
Obligatorily possessed nouns exist43 languages · 18%
No obligatorily possessed nouns201 languages · 82%
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Obligatorily possessed nouns exist | 1 | 5 | 8 | 1 | 21 | 7 |
| No obligatorily possessed nouns | 40 | 44 | 51 | 24 | 24 | 18 |
| All values | 41 | 49 | 59 | 25 | 45 | 25 |
Inside the largest families
| Family | Coded | Most frequent value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trans-New Guinea | 17 | No obligatorily possessed nouns | 82% |
| Austronesian | 15 | No obligatorily possessed nouns | 93% |
| Afro-Asiatic | 11 | No obligatorily possessed nouns | 100% |
| Niger-Congo | 11 | No obligatorily possessed nouns | 100% |
| Indo-European | 10 | No obligatorily possessed nouns | 90% |
| Pama-Nyungan | 9 | No obligatorily possessed nouns | 100% |
Languages to explore
From the same chapter
- Number of Possessive Nouns 243 languages