Resources on linguistic features

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w.a.zantema
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Resources on linguistic features

Post by w.a.zantema »

Hey all,

After a long time (literally decades) of being interested in conlangs and conlanging, I finally decided to start making my first conlang. Since the conlang I'm making is a priori and supposed to be naturalistic, I'm curious to know where I can find resources on how common certain linguistic features are cross-linguistically (anything from phonology, word order, grammatical features like ergativity or evidentiality, etc.). Or perhaps more importantly, which features are more likely to come together, like how apparently SOV languages tend to have postpositions rather than prepositions.

Any advice on where I could find this kind of information will be much appreciated. Thanks!
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Creyeditor
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Re: Resources on linguistic features

Post by Creyeditor »

The World Atlas of Language Structures (wals.info) is a good place to start.
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w.a.zantema
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Re: Resources on linguistic features

Post by w.a.zantema »

Oh wow, that's exactly what I was looking for, got an interactive map and intersecting features and everything. This will keep me entertained for hours, if not months.

Thank you so much!
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eldin raigmore
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Re: Resources on linguistic features

Post by eldin raigmore »

w.a.zantema wrote: 17 Sep 2021 16:14 Oh wow, that's exactly what I was looking for, got an interactive map and intersecting features and everything. This will keep me entertained for hours, if not months.

Thank you so much!
You can display up to four features simultaneously.
I’ve made very frequent use of being able to pair any two features.
Not so much three or four features, but I have used them.
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