Order of Genitive and Noun
Word order · one world map for each value
WALS codes 1,249 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “Genitive-noun (GenN)”, covers 685 of them (55%); the least frequent, “Both orders occur with neither order dominant”, covers 96.
That value is most frequent in South America (83% of the 130 languages coded there) and least frequent in Africa (27% of 325).
All 88 Sino-Tibetan languages coded have “Genitive-noun (GenN)”.
Indo-European is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 32 of 64.
Genitive-noun (GenN)685 languages · 55%
Noun-genitive (NGen)468 languages · 37%
Both orders occur with neither order dominant96 languages · 8%
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Genitive-noun (GenN) | 87 | 206 | 160 | 37 | 87 | 108 |
| Noun-genitive (NGen) | 222 | 56 | 114 | 10 | 52 | 14 |
| Both orders occur with neither order dominant | 16 | 9 | 26 | 22 | 15 | 8 |
| All values | 325 | 271 | 300 | 69 | 154 | 130 |
Inside the largest families
| Family | Coded | Most frequent value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austronesian | 165 | Noun-genitive (NGen) | 68% |
| Niger-Congo | 143 | Noun-genitive (NGen) | 77% |
| Sino-Tibetan | 88 | Genitive-noun (GenN) | 100% |
| Afro-Asiatic | 74 | Noun-genitive (NGen) | 78% |
| Indo-European | 64 | Genitive-noun (GenN) | 50% |
| Trans-New Guinea | 59 | Genitive-noun (GenN) | 98% |
| Eastern Sudanic | 38 | Noun-genitive (NGen) | 79% |
| Pama-Nyungan | 37 | Genitive-noun (GenN) | 59% |
| Uto-Aztecan | 25 | Genitive-noun (GenN) | 72% |
| Central Sudanic | 24 | Noun-genitive (NGen) | 62% |
| Altaic | 22 | Genitive-noun (GenN) | 100% |
| Austro-Asiatic | 22 | Noun-genitive (NGen) | 68% |
| Arawakan | 18 | Genitive-noun (GenN) | 67% |
| Oto-Manguean | 18 | Noun-genitive (NGen) | 94% |
Languages to explore
The most fully coded languages with each value.
- Genitive-noun (GenN): Finnish, Turkish, Mandarin, Hungarian, Japanese, Georgian
- Noun-genitive (NGen): French, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian, German, Greek (Modern)
- Both orders occur with neither order dominant: English, Maybrat, Mangarrayi, Martuthunira, Lakhota, Gooniyandi