Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives
Nouns and pronouns · one world map for each value
WALS codes 201 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “Same forms”, covers 143 of them (71%); the least frequent, “Different inflectional features”, covers 21.
That value is most frequent in Australia (100% of the 19 languages coded there) and least frequent in Africa (56% of 39).
All 12 Pama-Nyungan languages coded have “Same forms”.
Afro-Asiatic is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 10 of 19.
Same forms143 languages · 71%
Different stems37 languages · 18%
Different inflectional features21 languages · 10%
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Same forms | 22 | 36 | 26 | 19 | 25 | 15 |
| Different stems | 16 | 8 | 6 | 0 | 2 | 5 |
| Different inflectional features | 1 | 17 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| All values | 39 | 61 | 33 | 19 | 28 | 21 |
Inside the largest families
| Family | Coded | Most frequent value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austronesian | 23 | Same forms | 87% |
| Afro-Asiatic | 19 | Different stems | 53% |
| Indo-European | 19 | Same forms | 84% |
| Pama-Nyungan | 12 | Same forms | 100% |
| Niger-Congo | 11 | Same forms | 91% |