Changes

This page lists changes between different editions of WALS Online. While no longer accessible online, the data of older editions could be computed using the changes listed here. If you need a full database of an older edition this may prove cumbersome, so in this case contact us or download the data from the github repository.

Changes of non-core data, e.g. language names or classification, may occur anytime. These changed are tracked via issues on GitHub and applied to the database by running migration scripts. The current version number of the database is 3c1123e890e8 (cf. the version history of the database).

WALS Online 2014 ⇫

FeatureNumber of added/changed datapoints
Tea 3

Small corrections have been made to the classification mainly triggered by updates in Glottolog's classification.

WALS Online 2013 ⇫

Value assignment changes

The changes listed below include value corrections and additions of new values for existing features. Details about specific corrections can be found here.

FeatureNumber of added/changed datapoints
Consonant Inventories
93
Vowel Quality Inventories 1
Consonant-Vowel Ratio 15
Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems 9
Uvular Consonants 2
Glottalized Consonants 9
The Velar Nasal 1
Reduplication 2
Definite Articles 1
Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns 1
Person Marking on Adpositions 1
Number of Cases 1
Asymmetrical Case-Marking 1
Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes 1
Obligatory Possessive Inflection 1
Possessive Classification 1
Noun Phrase Conjunction 1
The Morphological Imperative 1
The Prohibitive 1
Imperative-Hortative Systems 1
Situational Possibility 1
Epistemic Possibility 1
Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking 1
Order of Subject, Object and Verb 2
Order of Subject and Verb 2
Order of Object and Verb 2
Order of Genitive and Noun 1
Order of Adjective and Noun 1
Order of Demonstrative and Noun 1
Order of Degree Word and Adjective 1
Position of Polar Question Particles 2
Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions 2
Alignment of Verbal Person Marking 1
Expression of Pronominal Subjects 1
Verbal Person Marking 1
Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking 1
Order of Person Markers on the Verb 1
Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give' 1
Passive Constructions 1
Polar Questions 1
Predicative Possession 1
Comparative Constructions 1
Purpose Clauses 2
'When' Clauses 1
Reason Clauses 2
Utterance Complement Clauses 1
Numeral Bases 1
M-T Pronouns 1
N-M Pronouns 1
Tea 1
Postverbal Negative Morphemes 1
SVNegO Order 1
Position of Negative Word With Respect to Subject, Object, and Verb 1
SNegVO Order 1
SVONeg Order 1
Position of negative words relative to beginning and end of clause and with respect to adjacency to verb 1
The Position of Negative Morphemes in SVO Languages 1
Preverbal Negative Morphemes 1
Order of Negative Morpheme and Verb 1
NegSVO Order 1
Minor morphological means of signaling negation 1
M in Second Person Singular 1
M in First Person Singular 1
Number of Possessive Nouns 1

Several datapoints have been removed (typically because they had been assigned to the wrong language, thus they show up as additions above).

WALS Online 2011 ⇫

Value assignment changes

The changes listed below include value corrections and additions of new values for existing features.

FeatureNumber of added/changed datapoints
Consonant Inventories 1
Vowel Nasalization 1
Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology
101
Reduplication 1
Coding of Nominal Plurality
138
Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns 1
The Associative Plural 1
Definite Articles
61
Indefinite Articles
64
Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives 1
Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives 1
Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns 2
Indefinite Pronouns 1
Person Marking on Adpositions 2
Position of Case Affixes
114
Ordinal Numerals 1
Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes
117
Action Nominal Constructions 1
Nominal and Verbal Conjunction 1
Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes
83
The Morphological Imperative 2
The Prohibitive 1
Imperative-Hortative Systems 2
The Optative 1
Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality 1
Coding of Evidentiality 1
Order of Subject, Object and Verb
166
Order of Subject and Verb
164
Order of Object and Verb
158
Order of Object, Oblique, and Verb
53
Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase
123
Order of Genitive and Noun
152
Order of Adjective and Noun
167
Order of Demonstrative and Noun
146
Order of Numeral and Noun
159
Order of Relative Clause and Noun
126
Order of Degree Word and Adjective
46
Position of Polar Question Particles
118
Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions
101
Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause
53
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase
126
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun
132
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun
164
Alignment of Verbal Person Marking 2
Expression of Pronominal Subjects
42
Verbal Person Marking 2
Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking 2
Order of Person Markers on the Verb 2
Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give' 3
Passive Constructions 2
Antipassive Constructions 1
Applicative Constructions 1
Negative Morphemes
223
Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation 2
Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation 2
Negative Indefinite Pronouns and Predicate Negation 1
Polar Questions
121
Hand and Arm 1
Finger and Hand 1
Numeral Bases 1
Para-Linguistic Usages of Clicks 1
Other changes
  • There are two new chapters (chapter 143 on Order of Negative Morpheme and Verb, and chapter 144 on Position of Negative Word With Respect to Subject, Object, and Verb, both with many new maps)
  • Additional features have been added to some chapters.
  • The genealogical classification of languages, including genera, has been updated.
  • The one-to-many relationship between chapters and features/maps is now clearly reflected in the structure of WALS: A single chapter can contain not just one feature, but several features, most often two (e.g. feature 39A and feature 39B), but sometimes (with the new chapters 143 and 144) quite a few features and maps.
  • For some of the features, WALS now includes examples supplied by the authors (for example feature 113A)
  • WALS Online now contains the long introduction chapter of the printed atlas from 2005

WALS Online 2008 ⇫

A description of errate in the printed version of 2005 can be found at http://blog.wals.info/category/errata/errata-2005/.