Predicative Possession
Simple clauses · one world map for each value
WALS codes 240 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “Have-Possessive”, covers 63 of them (26%); the least frequent, “Genitive Possessive”, covers 22.
That value is most frequent in North America (50% of the 36 languages coded there) and least frequent in Papunesia (3% of 34).
Among families with at least eight coded languages, Austronesian is the most uniform: 14 of 23 have “Topic Possessive”.
Sino-Tibetan is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 4 of 10.
Locational Possessive48 languages · 20%
Genitive Possessive22 languages · 9%
Topic Possessive48 languages · 20%
Conjunctional Possessive59 languages · 25%
Have-Possessive63 languages · 26%
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Locational Possessive | 11 | 29 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 |
| Genitive Possessive | 1 | 16 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Topic Possessive | 4 | 10 | 18 | 1 | 8 | 7 |
| Conjunctional Possessive | 27 | 2 | 10 | 8 | 7 | 5 |
| Have-Possessive | 18 | 19 | 1 | 0 | 18 | 7 |
| All values | 61 | 76 | 34 | 11 | 36 | 22 |
Inside the largest families
| Family | Coded | Most frequent value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indo-European | 25 | Have-Possessive | 48% |
| Niger-Congo | 25 | Conjunctional Possessive | 52% |
| Austronesian | 23 | Topic Possessive | 61% |
| Afro-Asiatic | 16 | Locational Possessive | 56% |
| Sino-Tibetan | 10 | Topic Possessive | 40% |
| Eastern Sudanic | 9 | Conjunctional Possessive | 56% |
Languages to explore
The most fully coded languages with each value.
- Locational Possessive: Russian, Finnish, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Kannada
- Genitive Possessive: Turkish, Lezgian, Maori, Burushaski, Meithei, Armenian (Eastern)
- Topic Possessive: Indonesian, Mandarin, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Thai, Tiwi
- Conjunctional Possessive: Amele, Hausa, Supyire, Hixkaryana, Swahili, Chukchi
- Have-Possessive: English, Spanish, Georgian, Basque, Greek (Modern), Abkhaz