Cree (Plains)
Algic family · Algonquian branch · North America
WALS records no dominant basic order of subject, object and verb for Cree (Plains), a group that holds 189 of the 1,376 languages it codes for this feature.
On Fixed Stress Locations, WALS codes Cree (Plains) as “Antepenultimate”, a value held by 12 of the 502 languages coded, Georgian and Greek (Modern) among them.
The closest grammar profile to Cree (Plains) in the atlas belongs to Campa (Axininca), an Arawakan language: the two agree on 33 of the 47 features both have coded.
On Alignment of Verbal Person Marking, WALS codes Cree (Plains) as “Hierarchical alignment”, a value held by 11 of the 380 languages coded, Passamaquoddy-Maliseet and Mapudungun among them.
Contrast Cree (Plains) with Campa (Axininca) or with any other language
Uncommon values
Values that fewer than one in ten of the coded languages share with Cree (Plains), rarest first.
- Order of Adposition and Noun PhraseNo adpositions30 of 1,184
- Exponence of Selected Inflectional FormativesCase + referentiality6 of 162
- Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Verbal InflectionOnly inclusive differentiated9 of 200
- Expression of Pronominal SubjectsPronominal subjects are expressed by clitics with variable host32 of 711
- Position of Polar Question ParticlesQuestion particle in second position in sentence52 of 884
- Order of Subject and VerbBoth orders with neither order dominant110 of 1,496
- Fusion of Selected Inflectional FormativesIsolating/concatenative13 of 165
- Applicative ConstructionsBenefactive object only; both bases16 of 183
Inside the Algic family
Cree (Plains) matches the most frequent Algic value on 40 of the 54 features where at least three other members of the family are coded (74%). Among the 5 Algic languages profiled here, that rate ranks second from the top.
| Feature | Cree (Plains) | Most relatives |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm Types | Trochaic: left-hand syllable in the foot is strong | Iambic: right-hand syllable in the foot is strong (4 of 5) |
Closest profiles
Languages that share the most coded values with Cree (Plains); the count is out of the features both languages are coded for.
The rest of the profile
WALS codes Cree (Plains) for 105 of the 144 profile features used on this site. The remaining 93 are listed here, grouped by topic; within each group the value Cree (Plains) shares with the fewest languages comes first.
Sounds 17
| Feature | Value | Languages sharing it |
|---|---|---|
| Consonant Inventories | Small | 89 of 563 |
| Vowel Quality Inventories | Small vowel inventory (2-4) | 93 of 564 |
| Lateral Consonants | No laterals | 95 of 567 |
| Consonant-Vowel Ratio | Moderately low | 101 of 564 |
| Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives | No voicing contrast | 182 of 567 |
| Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems | Other | 242 of 567 |
| The Velar Nasal | No velar nasal | 235 of 469 |
| Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems | No weight, or weight factor unknown | 261 of 500 |
| Weight-Sensitive Stress | Fixed stress (no weight-sensitivity) | 281 of 500 |
| Syllable Structure | Moderately complex syllable structure | 274 of 486 |
| Tone | No tones | 307 of 527 |
| Glottalized Consonants | No glottalized consonants | 409 of 567 |
| Vowel Nasalization | Contrastive nasal vowels absent | 180 of 244 |
| Presence of Uncommon Consonants | None | 449 of 567 |
| Uvular Consonants | No uvulars | 470 of 567 |
| Absence of Common Consonants | All present | 503 of 567 |
| Front Rounded Vowels | None | 525 of 562 |
Word structure 10
| Feature | Value | Languages sharing it |
|---|---|---|
| Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology | Approximately equal amounts of suffixing and prefixing | 147 of 969 |
| Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology | Consistently head-marking | 47 of 236 |
| Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb | 6-7 categories per word | 31 of 145 |
| Locus of Marking in the Clause | P is head-marked | 71 of 236 |
| Locus of Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases | Possessor is head-marked | 78 of 236 |
| Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking | Subject person/number marking is never syncretic | 81 of 198 |
| Case Syncretism | Inflectional case marking is absent or minimal | 123 of 198 |
| Reduplication | Productive full and partial reduplication | 278 of 368 |
| Exponence of Tense-Aspect-Mood Inflection | monoexponential TAM | 127 of 160 |
| Zero Marking of A and P Arguments | Non-zero marking | 219 of 235 |
Nouns and pronouns 19
| Feature | Value | Languages sharing it |
|---|---|---|
| Number of Cases | Exclusively borderline morphological case-marking | 24 of 261 |
| Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns | Person-number affixes | 25 of 261 |
| Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems | Non-sex-based gender system | 28 of 257 |
| Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns | Gender distinctions in 3rd person singular only | 61 of 378 |
| Person Marking on Adpositions | No adpositions | 63 of 378 |
| Number of Genders | Two | 50 of 257 |
| The Associative Plural | Special non-bound associative plural marker | 47 of 236 |
| Systems of Gender Assignment | Semantic assignment | 53 of 257 |
| Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes | Possessive prefixes | 255 of 902 |
| Asymmetrical Case-Marking | Symmetrical case-marking | 79 of 261 |
| Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Independent Pronouns | Inclusive and exclusive differentiated | 63 of 200 |
| Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives | Three-way contrast | 88 of 234 |
| Position of Case Affixes | Case suffixes | 452 of 1,031 |
| Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives | Unrelated | 100 of 225 |
| Occurrence of Nominal Plurality | Plural in all nouns, always obligatory | 133 of 291 |
| Coding of Nominal Plurality | Plural suffix | 513 of 1,066 |
| Numeral Classifiers | Numeral classifiers are absent | 260 of 400 |
| Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns | Second person pronouns encode no politeness distinction | 136 of 207 |
| Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives | Same forms | 143 of 201 |
Noun phrases 5
| Feature | Value | Languages sharing it |
|---|---|---|
| Action Nominal Constructions | Not both A and P in the same construction | 24 of 168 |
| Obligatory Possessive Inflection | Obligatorily possessed nouns exist | 43 of 244 |
| Possessive Classification | No possessive classification | 125 of 243 |
| Noun Phrase Conjunction | AND-languages: 'and' and 'with' are not identical | 131 of 234 |
| Number of Possessive Nouns | None reported | 233 of 243 |
Verbs: tense, mood, evidence 15
| Feature | Value | Languages sharing it |
|---|---|---|
| Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes | Tense-aspect prefixes | 153 of 1,131 |
| Epistemic Possibility | Affixes on verbs | 84 of 240 |
| The Prohibitive | Normal imperative + special negative | 182 of 496 |
| The Past Tense | No grammatical marking of past/non-past distinction | 88 of 222 |
| The Future Tense | No inflectional marking of future/non-future distinction | 112 of 222 |
| Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking | No overlap | 105 of 207 |
| The Perfect | No perfect | 114 of 222 |
| The Morphological Imperative | Second singular and second plural | 292 of 548 |
| Imperative-Hortative Systems | The language has neither a maximal nor a minimal system | 201 of 375 |
| Perfective/Imperfective Aspect | No grammatical marking of perfective/imperfective distinction | 121 of 222 |
| Suppletion According to Tense and Aspect | No suppletion in tense or aspect | 123 of 193 |
| Situational Possibility | Verbal constructions | 158 of 234 |
| Suppletion in Imperatives and Hortatives | None (= no suppletive imperatives reported in the reference material) | 153 of 193 |
| Verbal Number and Suppletion | No singular-(dual)-plural pairs/triples | 159 of 193 |
| The Optative | Inflectional optative absent | 271 of 319 |
Word order 3
| Feature | Value | Languages sharing it |
|---|---|---|
| Order of Object, Oblique, and Verb | More than one order with none dominant | 167 of 500 |
| Order of Demonstrative and Noun | Demonstrative word precedes noun (DemN) | 542 of 1,225 |
| Order of Object and Verb | Object follows verb (VO) | 705 of 1,518 |
Simple clauses 16
| Feature | Value | Languages sharing it |
|---|---|---|
| Antipassive Constructions | Antipassive with patient-like argument left implicit | 18 of 194 |
| Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking | Zero in all 3rd person forms | 36 of 380 |
| Productivity of the Antipassive Construction | productive | 24 of 186 |
| Order of Person Markers on the Verb | P precedes A | 57 of 379 |
| Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give' | Secondary-object construction | 65 of 378 |
| Other Roles of Applied Objects | No other roles (= Only benefactive) | 36 of 183 |
| Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation | Symmetric standard negation only: Type Sym | 114 of 297 |
| Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation | Non-assignable (no asymmetry found) | 114 of 297 |
| Predicative Adjectives | Predicative adjectives have verbal encoding | 151 of 386 |
| Negative Morphemes | Negative particle | 502 of 1,157 |
| Verbal Person Marking | Person marking of both the A and P arguments | 193 of 378 |
| Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals | Zero copula is impossible | 211 of 386 |
| Passive Constructions | There is no passive construction | 211 of 373 |
| Polar Questions | Question particle | 585 of 955 |
| Nominal and Locational Predication | Different | 269 of 386 |
| Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions | Morphological type but no compound type | 254 of 310 |
Vocabulary 8
| Feature | Value | Languages sharing it |
|---|---|---|
| Tea | Others | 36 of 230 |
| Hand and Arm | Different | 389 of 617 |
| Numeral Bases | Decimal | 125 of 196 |
| M in Second Person Singular | No m in second person singular | 152 of 230 |
| M in First Person Singular | No m in first person singular | 177 of 230 |
| N-M Pronouns | No N-M pronouns | 194 of 230 |
| M-T Pronouns | No M-T pronouns | 200 of 230 |
| Finger and Hand | Different | 521 of 593 |