Person Marking on Adpositions
Nouns and pronouns · one world map for each value
WALS codes 378 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “Adpositions without person marking”, covers 209 of them (55%); the least frequent, “Person marking for pronouns and nouns”, covers 23.
That value is most frequent in Eurasia (75% of the 77 languages coded there) and least frequent in Australia (27% of 26).
Among families with at least eight coded languages, Sino-Tibetan is the most uniform: 13 of 14 have “Adpositions without person marking”.
Afro-Asiatic is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 9 of 18.
No adpositions63 languages · 17%
Adpositions without person marking209 languages · 55%
Person marking for pronouns only83 languages · 22%
Person marking for pronouns and nouns23 languages · 6%
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No adpositions | 3 | 2 | 6 | 19 | 27 | 6 |
| Adpositions without person marking | 47 | 58 | 48 | 7 | 24 | 25 |
| Person marking for pronouns only | 22 | 14 | 19 | 0 | 12 | 16 |
| Person marking for pronouns and nouns | 0 | 3 | 6 | 0 | 9 | 5 |
| All values | 72 | 77 | 79 | 26 | 72 | 52 |
Inside the largest families
| Family | Coded | Most frequent value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austronesian | 41 | Adpositions without person marking | 61% |
| Niger-Congo | 24 | Adpositions without person marking | 83% |
| Indo-European | 19 | Adpositions without person marking | 79% |
| Afro-Asiatic | 18 | Adpositions without person marking | 50% |
| Trans-New Guinea | 18 | Adpositions without person marking | 72% |
| Sino-Tibetan | 14 | Adpositions without person marking | 93% |
| Austro-Asiatic | 10 | Adpositions without person marking | 90% |
| Pama-Nyungan | 10 | No adpositions | 90% |
| Eastern Sudanic | 9 | Adpositions without person marking | 56% |
| Uto-Aztecan | 8 | Person marking for pronouns and nouns | 50% |
Languages to explore
The most fully coded languages with each value.
- No adpositions: Tagalog, Kayardild, Ngiyambaa, Mangarrayi, Martuthunira, Kutenai
- Adpositions without person marking: English, French, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Indonesian
- Person marking for pronouns only: Finnish, Hungarian, Persian, Evenki, Hausa, Malagasy
- Person marking for pronouns and nouns: Abkhaz, Fijian, Maybrat, Wari', Jakaltek, Lavukaleve