Das grammatische Raritätenkabinett
A catalogue of rare and unusual grammatical phenomena documented across the world’s languages. 147 published entries.
46 entries
| # | Phenomenon | Found in | Domain | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | b-ö-f 'ox' | French | lexicon / sound-meaning matching | cattle |
| 2 | a basic colour term for TURQUOISE | Tsakhur (Nakh-Daghestanian) | lexicon / basic terms | colour terms |
| 3 | (a) two basic colour terms for BLUE and LIGHT BLUE (b) and at the same time none for PURPLE |
(a) Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian (East Slavonic, IE); Guatemalan Spanish, Italian (Romance, IE); Nepali (Indo-Aryan, IE); Turkish (Altaic) <br> (b) Russian from 17/18th up to early 19th century | lexicon / basic terms | colour terms |
| 4 | two basic colour terms for RED1 and RED2 | Hungarian (Ugric, Uralic) | lexicon / basic terms | colour terms |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 16 | phonemic contrast between diphthong and vowel followed by glide (see Image) |
Maastricht Dutch (Germanic, IE) | phonology / phoneme inventory | diphthong, glide |
| 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 |
| 22 | word-stress on post-postinitial syllable | Winnebago (Siouan) | phonology / word-stress | post-postinitial syllable |
| 31 | reduplication of verb to form finite verb of restrictive relative clauses with non-actor head nouns | Wetan (Eastern Indonesian, Austronesian) | morphology: inflection / types of exponents and their uses | reduplication, finite verb, restrictive relative clasue |
| 41 | stem suppletion of a noun ('man, person') essentially determined by number, with one stem used for all singular cases and another stem for all plural cases, but with both stems used for the dual, distributed by cases (most taking the plural stem, but a few the singular stem). | Slovene (Slavonic, IE) | morphology: inflection / suppletion | noun, number, dual |
| 51 | lack of even a minimal binary contrast (proximal/distal) in basic local adverbial deictics | Bavarian (Germanic, IE) | morphology: inflection / complexity | adverb, deixis, proximal, distal |
| 52 | a divine gender (for nouns for gods, saints, comets, and other supernatural referents), contrasting with masculine, feminine, animal, and inanimate genders | Jicaltepec Mixtec (Oto-Manguean) | morphology: inflection / categories and their domains: gender, respect | gender, noun |
| 56 | gender contrast (MASC/FEM) in personal pronouns exclusively in 1st person plural, both inclusive and exclusive | Shirumba (Heiban, Kordofanian) | morphology: inflection / categories and their domains: gender, respect | personal pronoun, inclusive, exclusive |
| 58 | contrast in pronouns for 2nd and 3rd person for sex of the referent and also of the speaker | Diuxi Mixtec (Oto-Manguean) | morphology: inflection / categories and their domains: gender, respect | personal pronoun |
| 59 | contrast in pronouns for 3rd person for number (SG/PL), gender (both of the referent and of the speaker), kin relationship between speaker and referent (and if affine, then also whether in ascending or descending generation), and ethnic identity (Yuchi vs. other) | Yuchi (isolate, east central Oklahoma, USA) | morphology: inflection / categories and their domains: gender, respect | personal pronoun, number, kinship |
| 62 | inflection of the great majority of words – nominal, pronominal, verbal –for sex of the speaker (and, in the case of male forms, also of the addressee, with males using female forms when addressing females), with female forms formed from male forms by final syllable reduction or male forms formed from female forms by adding a syllable (whose form depends on the class of word so inflected) | Yana (Hokan) | morphology: inflection / categories and their domains: gender, respect | deixis |
| 64 | a three-way distinction of possession for possessive pronouns, which also distinguish inclusive and exclusive: alienable, inalienable, family possession | Khinalug (Lezgic, NE Caucasian) | morphology: inflection / categories and their domains: possession | possessive pronoun, inclusive, exclusive |
| 67 | a three-way distinction among personal pronouns between 'singular speaker', 'singular non-speaker' (i.e. addressee or other), 'plural' (any speech-act role or combination of roles). | Balante (West Atlantic, Niger-Congo) | morphology: inflection / categories and their domains: person, number | personal pronoun |
| 68 | an ambal (aka 'paral', only referring to natural pairs) in addition to a dual (referring to any two referents) | Tocharian A and B (IE) (especially B, since in A the dual itself is obsolescent) | morphology: inflection / categories and their domains: person, number | dual, ambal |
| 85 | attributive adjectives agreeing (in gender, number, case) when they precede their noun but not when they follow it (using the invariable stem here) | German (Germanic, IE) | syntax / agreement: controllers, targets, categories, domains, conditions | noun, adjective |
| 86 | determiners and modifiers agreeing in all relevant agreement categories (gender, number, case) with only one of two or more conjoined nouns sharing these determiners and modifiers (rather than with both, relying on some resolution strategy in case of conflicting agreement categories), the agreed-with noun being the last (rather than the first) as well as the most distant conjunct (with nouns coming after determiners and modifiers) | Low German (Germanic, IE) | syntax / agreement: controllers, targets, categories, domains, conditions | determiner, modifier, coordination |
| 90 | accusative alignment for proper names and kin terms (as used for address), tripartite alignment for singular pronouns, neutral alignment for non-singular pronouns and plural common nouns, ergative alignment for non-plural common nouns |
Kalaw Lagaw La (Saibai dialect) (Pama-Nyungan, Australian) | syntax / grammatical relations: alignment | referential hierarchy, proper names, kin terms, personal pronouns, number |
| 92 | 3rd person independent pronouns as the only NPs to inflectionally distinguish subject and object | Washo (Hokan) | syntax / grammatical relations: alignment | case, pronoun, 3rd person |
| 98 | the two meanings 'sun' and 'future tense' expressed by the same form (because the future is grammaticalized from the adverb sina 'tomorrow', which in turn derives from si-na 'sun-come') | Mandinka (Mande, Niger-Congo) | semantics / polysemy | tense, future, grammaticalization |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 112 | infix positioned after the vowel of the penultimate syllable of the stem | Alabama (Muskogean) | phonology, morphology / types of exponents and their uses | infix |
| 116 | different definite article depending on whether an accompanying adjective denotes colour or another kind of property concept | Belhare (Kiranti, Tibeto-Burman) | morphology: inflection / cumulation, sensitivity | definite article, adjective, property concepts, colour |
| 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 |
| 129 | eight basic colour terms, of which no less than four are for REDs: shocking pink, burgundy, reddish brown, and wine red |
Jaqaru (Andean) | lexicon / basic terms | colour |
| 132 | a phoneme inventory with almost 40 times as many consonants as vowels | Ubykh (Northwest Caucasian) | phonology / phoneme inventory | vowel, consonant |
| 134 | dual forms of personal pronouns (all three persons) as the basic forms from which both singular and plural are formed by suffixation | Muisca (Chibchan) | morphology: inflection / zero | dual, plural, singular, personal pronoun |
| 138 | mixed ergative-accusative alignment, with person prefixes on intransitive verbs cross-referencing subject and person prefixes on transitive verbs cross-referencing object (=absolutive), while verbs also take person suffixes, which cross-reference subject both with intransitives and transitives (=nominative) |
Burushaski (isolate) | syntax / grammatical relations: alignment | nominative, absolutive, cross-reference, person, intransitive, transitive |
| 140 | number distinction (singular/plural) only on 2nd person pronouns, as well as on determiner demonstratives, and not on any other pronouns (including 1st) or nouns | Malagasy (West Indonesian, Austronesian) | morphology: inflection / categories and their domains: person, number | personal pronoun |
| 146 | different forms of the verb 'to say' depending on the sex of the person whose speaking is reported: bada '[a man] said', mana '[a woman] said' |
Ket (isolate, "Paleosiberian") | morphology, lexicon / agreement | gender, speech reporting |