Das grammatische Raritätenkabinett
A catalogue of rare and unusual grammatical phenomena documented across the world’s languages. 147 published entries.
14 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 |
| 16 | phonemic contrast between diphthong and vowel followed by glide (see Image) |
Maastricht Dutch (Germanic, IE) | phonology / phoneme inventory | diphthong, glide |
| 28 | phonemic secondary 'labio-palatalization' (simultaneous labial rounding and palatal constriction) |
Twi (Kwa, Niger-Congo); French (Romance, IE) | phonology / phoneme inventory | palatalization |
| 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 |
| 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 |