Universal #168
Legacy number: 168
| Number | 168 |
| Original | The morphological complexity of a case marker to signal “direction to” is never less than that of a case marker to express “location”; the morphological complexity of a case marker to signal “direction from” is never less than that of a case to express “location”. |
| Standardized | The morphological complexity of a case marker to signal “direction to” is never less than that of a case marker to express “location”; the morphological complexity of a case marker to signal “direction from” is never less than that of a case to express “location”. |
| Formula | TO/ FROM ≥ AT |
| Keywords | case, morpheme, complexity |
| Domain | inflection, semantics |
| Type | implication |
| Status | achronic |
| Quality | absolute |
| Basis | Hungarian (Ugric, Uralic), English, German (both W. Germanic, Indo-European) |
| Source | Moravcsik 1994a: 39 |
Discussion
Counterexamples
Coptic (Egyptian, Afro-Asiatic): hn- ‘in’ < Late Egyptian m-xnw-n- ‘inside of’ as compared with e- < Old/Middle/Late Egyptian r- ‘to’. (F. Kammerzell, p.c.)
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