Slave
Na-Dene family · Athapaskan branch · North America
Slave is an SOV language, like 564 of the 1,376 languages WALS codes for basic word order.
On Verbal Number and Suppletion, WALS codes Slave as “Singular-dual-plural triples, suppletion”, a value held by 2 of the 193 languages coded, the other being Kunama.
On Glottalized Consonants, all 6 other Na-Dene languages coded have the value “Ejectives only”; Slave has “Ejectives and glottalized resonants”.
Contrast Slave with Navajo or with any other language
Uncommon values
Values that fewer than one in ten of the coded languages share with Slave, rarest first.
- Suppletion According to Tense and AspectSuppletion according to aspect10 of 193
- Weight-Sensitive StressNot predictable26 of 500
- Situational PossibilityOther kinds of markers13 of 234
- Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional MorphologyPredominantly prefixing58 of 969
- Voicing in Plosives and FricativesVoicing contrast in fricatives alone38 of 567
- Third Person Pronouns and DemonstrativesRelated for non-human reference17 of 225
- Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress SystemsLexical: lexical stress, diacritic weight38 of 500
- Order of Relative Clause and NounMixed types of relative clause with none dominant64 of 824
Inside the Na-Dene family
Slave matches the most frequent Na-Dene value on 32 of the 49 features where at least three other members of the family are coded (65%). Among the 4 Na-Dene languages profiled here, that rate ranks second from the top.
Closest profiles
Languages that share the most coded values with Slave; the count is out of the features both languages are coded for.
The rest of the profile
WALS codes Slave for 127 of the 144 profile features used on this site. The remaining 116 are listed here, grouped by topic; within each group the value Slave shares with the fewest languages comes first.
Sounds 15
| Feature | Value | Languages sharing it |
|---|---|---|
| Lateral Consonants | /l/ and lateral obstruents | 47 of 567 |
| Consonant Inventories | Moderately large | 94 of 563 |
| Consonant-Vowel Ratio | Moderately high | 102 of 564 |
| Tone | Simple tone system | 132 of 527 |
| Vowel Nasalization | Contrastive nasal vowels present | 64 of 244 |
| Rhythm Types | Absent: no rhythmic stress | 98 of 323 |
| Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems | Other | 242 of 567 |
| Fixed Stress Locations | No fixed stress (mostly weight-sensitive stress) | 220 of 502 |
| The Velar Nasal | No velar nasal | 235 of 469 |
| Vowel Quality Inventories | Average vowel inventory (5-6) | 287 of 564 |
| Syllable Structure | Moderately complex syllable structure | 274 of 486 |
| 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 11
| Feature | Value | Languages sharing it |
|---|---|---|
| Reduplication | No productive reduplication | 55 of 368 |
| Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb | 8-9 categories per word | 24 of 145 |
| Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology | Consistently head-marking | 47 of 236 |
| 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 |
| Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives | No case | 75 of 162 |
| Case Syncretism | Inflectional case marking is absent or minimal | 123 of 198 |
| Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives | Exclusively concatenative | 125 of 165 |
| 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 |
|---|---|---|
| The Associative Plural | Special non-bound associative plural marker | 47 of 236 |
| Person Marking on Adpositions | Person marking for pronouns only | 83 of 378 |
| Indefinite Pronouns | Generic-noun-based indefinites | 85 of 326 |
| Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes | Possessive prefixes | 255 of 902 |
| Asymmetrical Case-Marking | No morphological case-marking | 81 of 261 |
| Definite Articles | Neither definite nor indefinite article | 198 of 620 |
| Ordinal Numerals | First, two-th, three-th | 110 of 321 |
| Position of Case Affixes | Neither case affixes nor adpositional clitics | 379 of 1,031 |
| Indefinite Articles | Neither indefinite nor definite | 198 of 534 |
| Number of Cases | No morphological case-marking | 100 of 261 |
| Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Verbal Inflection | No inclusive/exclusive opposition | 79 of 200 |
| Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns | Person-number stem | 114 of 261 |
| Coding of Nominal Plurality | Plural suffix | 513 of 1,066 |
| Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives | Two-way contrast | 126 of 234 |
| Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Independent Pronouns | No inclusive/exclusive opposition | 120 of 200 |
| Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns | Second person pronouns encode no politeness distinction | 136 of 207 |
| Comitatives and Instrumentals | Differentiation | 213 of 322 |
| Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns | No gender distinctions | 254 of 378 |
| Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives | Same forms | 143 of 201 |
Noun phrases 6
| Feature | Value | Languages sharing it |
|---|---|---|
| Possessive Classification | Three to five classes | 20 of 243 |
| Action Nominal Constructions | No action nominals | 42 of 168 |
| Nominal and Verbal Conjunction | Nominal and verbal conjunction are different | 125 of 301 |
| Noun Phrase Conjunction | AND-languages: 'and' and 'with' are not identical | 131 of 234 |
| Obligatory Possessive Inflection | No obligatorily possessed nouns | 201 of 244 |
| Number of Possessive Nouns | None reported | 233 of 243 |
Verbs: tense, mood, evidence 13
| Feature | Value | Languages sharing it |
|---|---|---|
| Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes | Tense-aspect prefixes | 153 of 1,131 |
| Coding of Evidentiality | Separate particle | 65 of 418 |
| The Past Tense | Present, 2-3 remoteness distinctions | 38 of 222 |
| The Morphological Imperative | No second-person imperatives | 122 of 548 |
| Imperative-Hortative Systems | The language has a maximal system, but not a minimal one | 133 of 375 |
| The Perfect | Other perfect | 80 of 222 |
| Epistemic Possibility | Other | 91 of 240 |
| Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality | Only indirect evidentials | 166 of 418 |
| Perfective/Imperfective Aspect | Grammatical marking of perfective/imperfective distinction | 101 of 222 |
| The Future Tense | Inflectional marking of future/non-future distinction | 110 of 222 |
| Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking | No overlap | 105 of 207 |
| Suppletion in Imperatives and Hortatives | None (= no suppletive imperatives reported in the reference material) | 153 of 193 |
| The Optative | Inflectional optative absent | 271 of 319 |
Word order 11
| Feature | Value | Languages sharing it |
|---|---|---|
| Order of Object, Oblique, and Verb | Oblique-object-verb (XOV) | 48 of 500 |
| Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause | More than one type of adverbial subordinators with none dominant | 93 of 659 |
| Position of Polar Question Particles | Question particle at beginning of sentence | 129 of 884 |
| Order of Demonstrative and Noun | Demonstrative word precedes noun (DemN) | 542 of 1,225 |
| Order of Object and Verb | Object precedes verb (OV) | 712 of 1,518 |
| Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase | Postpositions | 577 of 1,184 |
| Order of Numeral and Noun | Numeral follows noun (NNum) | 608 of 1,154 |
| Order of Genitive and Noun | Genitive-noun (GenN) | 685 of 1,249 |
| Order of Adjective and Noun | Modifying adjective follows noun (NAdj) | 879 of 1,367 |
| Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions | Interrogative phrases not obligatorily initial | 615 of 902 |
| Order of Subject and Verb | Subject precedes verb (SV) | 1,192 of 1,496 |
Simple clauses 23
| Feature | Value | Languages sharing it |
|---|---|---|
| Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking | Zero realization of all third person singular S forms | 45 of 380 |
| Order of Person Markers on the Verb | P precedes A | 57 of 379 |
| 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 |
| Passive Constructions | There is a passive construction | 162 of 373 |
| Alignment of Case Marking of Pronouns | Neutral | 79 of 172 |
| Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give' | Indirect-object construction | 189 of 378 |
| Verbal Person Marking | Person marking of both the A and P arguments | 193 of 378 |
| Alignment of Case Marking of Full Noun Phrases | Neutral | 98 of 190 |
| Applicative Constructions | No applicative construction | 100 of 183 |
| Other Roles of Applied Objects | No applicative construction | 100 of 183 |
| Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals | Zero copula is impossible | 211 of 386 |
| Alignment of Verbal Person Marking | Accusative alignment | 212 of 380 |
| Reciprocal Constructions | Distinct from reflexive | 99 of 175 |
| Polar Questions | Question particle | 585 of 955 |
| Expression of Pronominal Subjects | Pronominal subjects are expressed by affixes on verbs | 437 of 711 |
| Nominal and Locational Predication | Different | 269 of 386 |
| Antipassive Constructions | No antipassive | 146 of 194 |
| Productivity of the Antipassive Construction | no antipassive | 146 of 186 |
| Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions | Morphological type but no compound type | 254 of 310 |
| Negative Indefinite Pronouns and Predicate Negation | Negative indefinites co-occur with predicate negation | 170 of 206 |
Complex sentences 7
| Feature | Value | Languages sharing it |
|---|---|---|
| Relativization on Obliques | Non-Reduction Strategy | 14 of 112 |
| Relativization on Subjects | Non-reduction | 24 of 166 |
| Purpose Clauses | Balanced | 38 of 170 |
| 'Want' Complement Subjects | The complement subject is expressed overtly | 72 of 283 |
| 'When' Clauses | Balanced | 84 of 174 |
| Reason Clauses | Balanced | 90 of 169 |
| Utterance Complement Clauses | Balanced | 114 of 143 |
Vocabulary 11
| Feature | Value | Languages sharing it |
|---|---|---|
| Number of Basic Colour Categories | 7 or between 7 and 8 categories | 14 of 119 |
| Number of Non-Derived Basic Colour Categories | 6 categories | 29 of 119 |
| Green and Blue | Green and blue | 30 of 120 |
| 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 |
| Red and Yellow | Red and yellow | 98 of 120 |
| 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 |