Features for Future English

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Phonology

Consonant Inventories WALS Moderately large
Vowel Quality Inventories WALS Large (7-14)
Consonant-Vowel Ratio WALS Average
Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives WALS In fricatives alone
Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems WALS None missing in /p t k b d g/
Uvular Consonants WALS Uvular continuants only
Glottalized Consonants WALS No glottalized consonants
Lateral Consonants WALS /l/ and lateral obstruent
The Velar Nasal WALS Initial velar nasal
Vowel Nasalization WALS Contrast absent
Front Rounded Vowels WALS High and mid
Syllable Structure WALS Complex
Tone WALS No tones
Fixed Stress Locations WALS No fixed stress
Weight-Sensitive Stress WALS Not predictable
Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems WALS Lexical stress
Rhythm Types WALS Trochaic
Absence of Common Consonants WALS All present
Presence of Uncommon Consonants WALS None

Morphology

Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives WALS Exclusively concatenative
Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives WALS No case
Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb WALS 4-5 categories per word
Locus of Marking in the Clause WALS Head marking
Locus of Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases WALS Dependent marking
Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology WALS Inconsistent or other
Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology WALS Weakly prefixing
Reduplication WALS No productive reduplication
Case Syncretism WALS No case marking
Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking WALS Syncretic

Nominal Categories

Number of Genders WALS Three
Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems WALS Sex-based
Systems of Gender Assignment WALS Semantic
Coding of Nominal Plurality WALS Plural word
Occurrence of Nominal Plurality WALS All nouns, always optional
Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns WALS Person-number stem
The Associative Plural WALS No associative plural
Definite Articles WALS Definite affix
Indefinite Articles WALS No indefinite, but definite article
Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Independent Pronouns WALS No inclusive/exclusive
Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Verbal Inflection WALS No inclusive/exclusive
Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives WALS Two-way contrast
Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives WALS Identical
Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives WALS Related for all demonstratives
Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns WALS 3rd person singular only
Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns WALS No politeness distinction
Indefinite Pronouns WALS Generic-noun-based
Intensifiers and Reflexive Pronouns WALS Identical
Person Marking on Adpositions WALS No person marking
Number of Cases WALS No morphological case-marking
Asymmetrical Case-Marking WALS No case-marking
Position of Case Affixes WALS Prepositional clitics
Comitatives and Instrumentals WALS Identity
Ordinal Numerals WALS First, second, three-th
Distributive Numerals WALS No distributive numerals
Numeral Classifiers WALS Absent
Conjunctions and Universal Quantifiers WALS Formally similar, without interrogative
Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes WALS No possessive affixes

Nominal Syntax

Obligatory Possessive Inflection WALS Absent
Possessive Classification WALS No possessive classification
Genitives, Adjectives and Relative Clauses WALS Highly differentiated
Adjectives without Nouns WALS Marked by following word
Action Nominal Constructions WALS Mixed
Noun Phrase Conjunction WALS 'And' different from 'with'
Nominal and Verbal Conjunction WALS Identity

Verbal Categories

Perfective/Imperfective Aspect WALS Grammatical marking
The Past Tense WALS Present, no remoteness distinctions
The Future Tense WALS Inflectional future exists
The Perfect WALS From possessive
Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes WALS Mixed type
The Morphological Imperative WALS Second person number-neutral
The Prohibitive WALS Normal imperative + normal negative
Imperative-Hortative Systems WALS Neither type of system
The Optative WALS Inflectional optative present
Situational Possibility WALS Affixes on verbs
Epistemic Possibility WALS Affixes on verbs
Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking WALS Overlap for both possibility and necessity
Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality WALS Indirect only
Coding of Evidentiality WALS Modal morpheme
Suppletion According to Tense and Aspect WALS Tense and aspect
Verbal Number and Suppletion WALS None

Word Order

Order of Subject, Object and Verb WALS SVO
Order of Subject and Verb WALS SV
Order of Object and Verb WALS VO
Order of Object, Oblique, and Verb WALS VOX
Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase WALS Prepositions
Order of Genitive and Noun WALS Noun-Genitive
Order of Adjective and Noun WALS Adjective-Noun
Order of Demonstrative and Noun WALS Demonstrative-Noun
Order of Numeral and Noun WALS Numeral-Noun
Order of Relative Clause and Noun WALS Noun-Relative clause
Order of Degree Word and Adjective WALS Degree word-Adjective
Position of Polar Question Particles WALS Initial
Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions WALS Initial interrogative phrase
Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause WALS Initial subordinator word
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase WALS VO and Prepositions
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun WALS VO and NRel
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun WALS VO and NAdj
Order of Negative Morpheme and Verb WALS OptDoubleNeg
Position of Negative Morpheme With Respect to Subject, Object and Verb WALS ObligDoubleNeg

Simple Clauses

Alignment of Case Marking of Full Noun Phrases WALS Neutral
Alignment of Case Marking of Pronouns WALS Nominative - accusative (standard)
Alignment of Verbal Person Marking WALS Accusative
Expression of Pronominal Subjects WALS Subject affixes on verb
Verbal Person Marking WALS Only the A argument
Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking WALS No zero realization
Order of Person Markers on the Verb WALS A and P do not or do not both occur on the verb
Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give' WALS Mixed
Reciprocal Constructions WALS Identical to reflexive
Passive Constructions WALS Present
Antipassive Constructions WALS No antipassive
Applicative Constructions WALS No applicative construction
Periphrastic Causative Constructions WALS Sequential but no purposive
Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions WALS Morphological but no compound
Negative Morphemes WALS Double negation
Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation WALS Asymmetric
Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation WALS A/Cat
Negative Indefinite Pronouns and Predicate Negation WALS Predicate negation also present
Polar Questions WALS Interrogative verb morphology
Predicative Possession WALS 'Have'
Predicative Adjectives WALS Verbal encoding
Nominal and Locational Predication WALS Identical
Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals WALS Impossible
Comparative Constructions WALS Particle

Complex Sentences

Relativization on Subjects WALS Relative pronoun
Relativization on Obliques WALS Relative pronoun
'Want' Complement Subjects WALS Subject is left implicit
Purpose Clauses WALS Balanced/deranked
'When' Clauses WALS Balanced/deranked
Reason Clauses WALS Balanced/deranked
Utterance Complement Clauses WALS Balanced

Lexicon

Hand and Arm WALS Different
Finger and Hand WALS Different
Numeral Bases WALS Decimal
Number of Non-Derived Basic Colour Categories WALS 6
Number of Basic Colour Categories WALS 11
Green and Blue WALS Green vs. blue
Red and Yellow WALS Red vs. yellow
M-T Pronouns WALS No M-T pronouns
N-M Pronouns WALS No N-M pronouns
Tea WALS Words derived from Min Nan Chinese te

Other

Writing Systems WALS Alphabetic

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