'When' Clauses
Complex sentences · one world map for each value
WALS codes 174 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “Balanced”, covers 84 of them (48%); the least frequent, “Balanced/deranked”, covers 39.
That value is most frequent in Papunesia (70% of the 33 languages coded there) and least frequent in Eurasia (27% of 48).
Among families with at least eight coded languages, Indo-European is the most uniform: 11 of 13 have “Balanced/deranked”.
Niger-Congo is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 7 of 15.
Balanced84 languages · 48%
Balanced/deranked39 languages · 22%
Deranked51 languages · 29%
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Balanced | 20 | 13 | 23 | 7 | 11 | 10 |
| Balanced/deranked | 8 | 17 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| Deranked | 8 | 18 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 9 |
| All values | 36 | 48 | 33 | 14 | 20 | 23 |
Inside the largest families
| Family | Coded | Most frequent value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austronesian | 22 | Balanced | 82% |
| Niger-Congo | 15 | Balanced | 47% |
| Indo-European | 13 | Balanced/deranked | 85% |
| Afro-Asiatic | 10 | Balanced | 50% |
Languages to explore
Closely related features
WALS codes purpose clauses and reason clauses with the same kind of values, for largely the same languages.
| Value | Languages | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Balanced | 38 | 22% |
| Balanced/deranked | 30 | 18% |
| Deranked | 102 | 60% |
| Value | Languages | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Balanced | 90 | 53% |
| Balanced/deranked | 37 | 22% |
| Deranked | 42 | 25% |