Universal 1338: VO ⇒ flexion
- Original
- The more marked the position in which a word appears, the stronger the tendency for this word to present a marked morphology.
Therefore a marked position (centrifugal, VO, where V is the center and O the periphery) tends to be reflected by a marked morphology (flexional rather than agglutinative). - Standardized
- The more marked the position in which a word appears, the stronger the tendency for this word to present a marked morphology.
Therefore a marked position (centrifugal, VO, where V is the center and O the periphery) tends to be reflected by a marked morphology (flexional rather than agglutinative).That is:
IF morphology is flexional rather than agglutinative, THEN basic order tends to be VO rather than OV.
IF morphology is agglutinative rather than flexional, THEN basic order tends to be OV rather than VO. - Keywords
- markedness, order, VO, OV, flexion, agglutination
- Domain
- morphology, syntax
- Type
- implication
- Status
- achronic
- Quality
- statistical
- Basis
- languages mentioned in Moreno 1987
- Source
- Moreno 1987: 190
- Counterexamples
1. Moreno’s correlation of word order syntax with morphological typology is inspired by W. P. Lehmann 1973, see ##11, 13, where OV implies agglutination, while VO implies flexion.2. Examples of languages that are OV & agglutinative: Korean, Basque.