Das grammatische Raritätenkabinett
A catalogue of rare and unusual grammatical phenomena documented across the world’s languages. 147 published entries.
43 entries
| # | Phenomenon | Found in | Domain | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | labial flap /vb/ (See Image) |
over 60 languages in Africa (Afroasiatic: Chadic; Niger-Congo: esp. Adamawa-Ubangi, also Benue-Congo; Nilo-Saharan: Central Sudanic) and at least one in Asia (Austronesian: Sika, spoken on the island of Flores, Indonesia) | phonology / phoneme inventory | labial flap |
| 7 | bilabial trill /è/, (i) prenasalized bilabial stop with trilled release, or (ii) trilled fricated vowel as syllabic variant of labial fricative |
(i) Nias (Sundic, Western Malayo-Polynesian, Austronesian), Kele, Titan, and perhaps other members of the Admiralty subgroup (Oceanic, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Austronesian);<br> (ii) Luquan Yi (Tibeto-Burman, Sino-Tibetan) | phonology / phoneme inventory | bilabial, trill |
| 8 | laminal (tongue-blade) trill (see Image) |
Czech (Slavonic, IE) | phonology / phoneme inventory | laminal, trill |
| 9 | apical trills at three places of articulation (fronted alveolar, alveolar, retroflex) (see Image), both without and with palatalization | Toda (Dravidian) | phonology / phoneme inventory | apical, trill |
| 10 | velar fricative (see Image) as the sole fricative (if this is what it is), rather than the expected /s/ |
Iwaidjian (non-Pama Nyungan, Australian) | phonology / phoneme inventory | fricative, velar |
| 11 | eight or nine liquids, with three rhotics and five or six laterals |
Iwaidjian (non-Pama Nyungan, Australian) | phonology / phoneme inventory | liquid, lateral, rhotic |
| 12 | the full gamut of (voiceless) palato-alveolar, alveolar, bilabial, and (dialectally) velar affricates (see Image) | German (Germanic, IE) | phonology / phoneme inventory | affricates, alveolar, palato-alveolar, bilabial, velar |
| 13 | four-way phonemic contrast of dental, alveolar, palato-alveolar, and retroflex stops |
Nunggubuyu (non-Pama Nyungan, Australian) | phonology / phoneme inventory | stops, dental, alveolar, palato-alveolar, retroflex |
| 14 | lack of bilabial nasal and possibly bilabial stops | Iroquois; Tlingit (Na-Dene) | phonology / phoneme inventory | bilabial, nasal, stops |
| 15 | three-way quantity contrast of both vowels and consonants | Estonian (?), Livonian (?), Saami (?) (all Uralic) | phonology / quantity | vowel, consonant |
| 16 | phonemic contrast between diphthong and vowel followed by glide (see Image) |
Maastricht Dutch (Germanic, IE) | phonology / phoneme inventory | diphthong, glide |
| 17 | Resolved Moraic Trochee as foot type | (esp. older) Germanic (IE); Cayuvava (Andean-Equatorial) (?) | phonology / foot structure | moraic trochee, resolved |
| 18 | a ternary constraint on prosodic word size: minimal word must be a trimoraic foot |
Gilbertese (Micronesian) | phonology / foot structure | prosodic word, minimal word, trimoraic foot |
| 19 | trimoraic and quadrimoraic syllables as a normal syllable type in the native vocabulary, with moras as prosody-bearing units (not just units of syllabic weight) | Gilbertese (Micronesian) | phonology / foot structure, syllable structure | syllable type |
| 20 | Foot Harmony: If at least one foot of a word constitutes a canonical /∪'- / iamb, then all feet of the word are made iambic; otherwise all feet are made trochaic |
Yidiny (Pama-Nyungan, Australian) | phonology / foot structure | iamb, trochee, foot harmony |
| 21 | word-stress on postinitial syllable (or mora) | less than 3% of languages, including Araucanian and a few Uto-Aztecan languages (though reconstructed for Proto-Uto-Aztecan!) | phonology / word-stress | postinitial syllable |
| 22 | word-stress on post-postinitial syllable | Winnebago (Siouan) | phonology / word-stress | post-postinitial syllable |
| 23 | word-stress (in non-focussed or naturally focussed phrases) phonetically implemented by low rather than high pitch | Saipan and Guam dialects of Chamorro (Austronesian; the Rota dialect has high-pitch stress); Diegueño (Yuman; as a less common alternant to high-pitch stress) | phonology / word-stress | low pitch |
| 27 | place of articulation of vowels exploited for iconic expression of size (e.g., for diminutives), but with [high, front] expressing large size and [low, back] small size | Korean (isolate); Bahnar (Mon-Khmer, Austro-Asiatic) | lexicon, phonology / sound-meaning matching: iconicity | vowel, place of articulation, size, iconicity |
| 28 | phonemic secondary 'labio-palatalization' (simultaneous labial rounding and palatal constriction) |
Twi (Kwa, Niger-Congo); French (Romance, IE) | phonology / phoneme inventory | palatalization |
| 29 | use of metathesis (CV ~ VC) for grammatical purposes, viz. to express distinctions of aspect and/or definiteness, or of word-class (noun-verb) |
Rotuman (Oceanic, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Austronesian); Clallam and other Straits lgs of Coast Salish; Sierra Miwok lgs and Costanoan lgs (Penutian) | phonology, morphology / types of exponents and their uses | metathesis, aspect, definiteness, word class |
| 30 | case distinction exclusively by tone | Eastern (or Para-)Nilotic (Nilo-Saharan); (some) Cushitic, (some) Omotic (?) (Afroasiatic); (some) Bantu, Bantoid, Kwa (Niger-Congo); Burmese (Tibeto-Burman, Sino-Tibetan) (?) | phonology, morphology / types of exponents and their uses | case, tone |
| 74 | endoclitics occurring not only inside morphologically complex words, but even within monomorphemic words, with the positioning of the clitic (a)regulated by one general phonological rule, (b) not regulated by a general phonological rule, although when endoclitic to simple verbs, the clitic always comes before the last segment of the verb stem (subject person-number markers are cliticized to constituents in focus, being always enclitic with arguments in focus, but en- or endo-clitic with verbs in focus) |
(a) English (Germanic, IE) (?);<br> (b) Udi (NE Caucasian) | phonology, morphology, syntax / word integrity | clitic, endoclitic |
| 99 | high and low vowels as one class as opposed to mid vowels in determining vowel harmony | Swahili and perhaps other Bantu languages (Niger-Congo) | phonology / segment classes: vowel harmony | vowels, high, low, mid |
| 100 | vowel harmony in terms of vowel peripherality, rather than of backness (palatal harmony), roundness (labial harmony), or ATR (height harmony) | Pasiego (northwestern Spanish dialect, Romance, IE) | phonology / segment classes: vowel harmony | peripherality |
| 101 | VC as (the only or preferred) syllable type, with VC0CV thus syllabified as VC0C.V rather than as VC0.CV, at least at some level | Arrernte, Oykangand, Olgol, Okunjan, Kawarrangg (Pama-Nyungan, Australian); Barra dialect of Gaelic (Celtic, IE) | phonology / syllable structure | onset |
| 102 | intervocalic consonant clusters of decreasing sonority in toto assigned to onsets of second syllables | Malayalam (Dravidian) | phonology / syllable structure | onset |
| 103 | word-stress on every second mora, realized (as pitch accent) on vowel of the respective syllable, main on second mora, secondary on fourth, sixth, etc., counting from left | Ainu (isolate) | phonology / word-stress | mora |
| 104 | secondary word-stress on odd-numbered word-final syllables, but only if the word is morphologically complex, irrespective of its morphological composition; no secondary stress in monomorphemic words (primary stress is on the first syllable of content words) | Tohono O'odham (formerly known as Papago, Uto-Aztecan) | phonology / word-stress | syllable-counting, morphological complexity |
| 105 | stress accent and lexical tone as independent contrasting categories of word prosody, with contrastive tone on both stressed and unstressed syllables | Ma'ya (South Halmahera-West New Guinea, Malayo-Polynesian, Austronesian) | phonology / word-stress, tone | |
| 106 | pitch accent and lexical tone as independent contrasting categories of word prosody | Papiamentu (Iberian-based creole) | phonology / word-stress, tone | pitch accent |
| 107 | tonal patterns (initial lowering delayed by one mora, tonal alternations in inflected verb forms and in combinations of nouns with following particles) dependent on height of vowel in tone-bearing or neighbouring mora | Matsue dialect of Japanese | phonology / tone | vowel height |
| 108 | consonant ablaut (aka "permutation" or "polarity"): phonological alternation of stem-initial consonants conditioned by suffix |
Fulani and some other Atlantic languages, but not all (Niger-Congo) | phonology / alternations: conditioning | consonant alternation, suffix |
| 111 | infix positioned after the last consonant of the onset of the stem, i.e., after the first consonant if there is only one or after a consonant cluster if there are more |
Tagalog (Philippine Austronesian), Atayal (Formosan Austronesian) | phonology, morphology / types of exponents and their uses | infix |
| 112 | infix positioned after the vowel of the penultimate syllable of the stem | Alabama (Muskogean) | phonology, morphology / types of exponents and their uses | infix |
| 113 | infix positioned after the second syllable of the stem | Dakota (Siouan) (?) | phonology, morphology / types of exponents and their uses | infix |
| 124 | voiceless apico-dental plosive followed by a voiceless bilabial trill behaving as a single segment (see Image) |
in about a dozen words each in Wari' and Oro Win (Chapakuran, Arawakan, Andean-Equatorial) | phonology / phoneme inventory | apico-dental plosive, bilabial trill, complex segments |
| 125 | when tone is privative, low tone as marked (hence phonologically active) relative to (phonologically inactive) high tone, rather than the other way round | a small group of Bantu lgs, including Ruwund, Luba, Tembo, Tonga (?) (Niger-Congo); Engenni (Edo, Kwa, Niger-Congo); Tsuut'ina (aka Sarcee, originally Northern Athabaskan, but long isolated) and (formerly) all Southern (aka Apachean) Athabaskan lgs; Tlingit (Sanya-Henya dialect) (Na-Dene); Dubea, Yabem (Oceanic, Malayo-Polynesian, Austronesian) | phonology / tone | high/low, markedness |
| 126 | tonal agreement: lexical tone of possessive pronoun (H or HL), and no other determiner or modifier, being reproduced on the noun it is in syntactic construction with, replacing the noun's own lexical tone (also H or HL, with initial L extratonal) |
Barasana (Eastern Tukanoan, Andean-Equatorial) | phonology, syntax / tone, agreement | possessive pronoun |
| 127 | word-stress sensitive to consonant voicing (such sensitivity to phonation being more characteristic of tone than of stress) | Pirahã (Mura-Pirahã, Macro-Chibchan) | phonology / word-stress, tone | consonant, voicing |
| 128 | as many as five phonological tone levels, plus two falling and one rising contour tone | Black Miao (of Ch'ing Chiang Miao (Miao-Yao, Sino-Tibetan (?)); Dan (Ivory Coast dialect; Mande, Niger-Congo) | phonology / tone | tone levels |
| 131 | a phoneme inventory with more vowels than consonants (10 : 8) | Hawaiian, and probably other Polynesian lgs (Austronesian) | phonology / phoneme inventory | vowel, consonant |
| 132 | a phoneme inventory with almost 40 times as many consonants as vowels | Ubykh (Northwest Caucasian) | phonology / phoneme inventory | vowel, consonant |