Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause
Word order · one world map for each value
WALS codes 659 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “Initial subordinator word”, covers 398 of them (60%); the least frequent, “Clause-internal adverbial subordinators”, covers 8.
That value is most frequent in Australia (76% of the 21 languages coded there) and least frequent in South America (21% of 62).
Among families with at least eight coded languages, Austronesian is the most uniform: 98 of 105 have “Initial subordinator word”.
Trans-New Guinea is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 7 of 19.
Initial subordinator word398 languages · 60%
Final subordinator word96 languages · 15%
Clause-internal adverbial subordinators8 languages · 1%
Suffixal adverbial subordinators64 languages · 10%
More than one type of adverbial subordinators with none dominant93 languages · 14%
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Initial subordinator word | 122 | 82 | 107 | 16 | 58 | 13 |
| Final subordinator word | 11 | 40 | 10 | 0 | 14 | 21 |
| Clause-internal adverbial subordinators | 4 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Suffixal adverbial subordinators | 4 | 22 | 9 | 1 | 12 | 16 |
| More than one type of adverbial subordinators with none dominant | 20 | 28 | 18 | 1 | 14 | 12 |
| All values | 161 | 173 | 144 | 21 | 98 | 62 |
Inside the largest families
| Family | Coded | Most frequent value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austronesian | 105 | Initial subordinator word | 93% |
| Niger-Congo | 64 | Initial subordinator word | 91% |
| Indo-European | 51 | Initial subordinator word | 82% |
| Sino-Tibetan | 50 | Final subordinator word | 46% |
| Afro-Asiatic | 44 | Initial subordinator word | 77% |
| Eastern Sudanic | 21 | Initial subordinator word | 81% |
| Trans-New Guinea | 19 | Suffixal adverbial subordinators | 37% |
| Oto-Manguean | 18 | Initial subordinator word | 89% |
| Austro-Asiatic | 14 | Initial subordinator word | 64% |
| Altaic | 12 | Initial subordinator word | 42% |
| Central Sudanic | 12 | Initial subordinator word | 42% |
| Pama-Nyungan | 10 | Initial subordinator word | 80% |
| Tupian | 10 | Final subordinator word | 50% |
| Uto-Aztecan | 10 | More than one type of adverbial subordinators with none dominant | 60% |
Languages to explore
The most fully coded languages with each value.
- Initial subordinator word: English, French, Russian, Finnish, Spanish, Indonesian
- Final subordinator word: Japanese, Amele, Basque, Korean, Khalkha, Hixkaryana
- Clause-internal adverbial subordinators: Nunggubuyu, Nkore-Kiga, Yukulta
- Suffixal adverbial subordinators: Lezgian, Abkhaz, Evenki, Burmese, Quechua (Imbabura), Kiowa
- More than one type of adverbial subordinators with none dominant: Turkish, Kannada, Slave, Burushaski, Yaqui, Kanuri