Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase
Word order · one world map for each value
WALS codes 1,184 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “Postpositions”, covers 577 of them (49%); the least frequent, “Inpositions”, covers 8.
That value is most frequent in South America (81% of the 118 languages coded there) and least frequent in Africa (25% of 294).
All 53 Trans-New Guinea languages coded have “Postpositions”.
Central Sudanic is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 9 of 20.
Postpositions577 languages · 49%
Prepositions511 languages · 43%
Inpositions8 languages · 1%
More than one adposition type with none dominant58 languages · 5%
No adpositions30 languages · 3%
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Postpositions | 74 | 196 | 114 | 31 | 66 | 96 |
| Prepositions | 192 | 77 | 151 | 9 | 65 | 17 |
| Inpositions | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 1 | 0 |
| More than one adposition type with none dominant | 27 | 7 | 10 | 6 | 7 | 1 |
| No adpositions | 1 | 3 | 2 | 9 | 11 | 4 |
| All values | 294 | 283 | 277 | 62 | 150 | 118 |
Inside the largest families
| Family | Coded | Most frequent value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austronesian | 155 | Prepositions | 88% |
| Niger-Congo | 140 | Prepositions | 79% |
| Sino-Tibetan | 88 | Postpositions | 92% |
| Afro-Asiatic | 74 | Prepositions | 77% |
| Indo-European | 70 | Prepositions | 54% |
| Trans-New Guinea | 53 | Postpositions | 100% |
| Eastern Sudanic | 30 | Prepositions | 70% |
| Uto-Aztecan | 25 | Postpositions | 68% |
| Altaic | 24 | Postpositions | 100% |
| Austro-Asiatic | 24 | Prepositions | 71% |
| Pama-Nyungan | 23 | Postpositions | 48% |
| Central Sudanic | 20 | Prepositions | 45% |
| Oto-Manguean | 20 | Prepositions | 100% |
| Mande | 15 | Postpositions | 100% |
Languages to explore
The most fully coded languages with each value.
- Postpositions: Finnish, Turkish, Hungarian, Japanese, Georgian, Lezgian
- Prepositions: English, French, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian, German
- Inpositions: Gooniyandi, Tümpisa Shoshone
- More than one adposition type with none dominant: Mandarin, Mapudungun, Koromfe, Yurok, Amharic, Murle
- No adpositions: Kayardild, Ngiyambaa, Martuthunira, Kutenai, Oneida, Kiowa