Universal #568

Legacy number: 568

 Number  566
 Original  If 2nd and 3rd Person differentiate a Dual, so does (with more than chance frequency) 1st (but not vice versa).
 Standardized  IF 2nd and 3rd person differentiate a dual, THEN so does (with more than chance frequency) 1st (but not vice versa).
 Formula  Du (2 & 3 person) ⇒ Du (1 person)
 Keywords  pronoun, personal pronoun, number, dual, 3rd person, 2nd person, 1st person
 Domain  inflection
 Type  implication
 Status  achronic
 Quality  absolute
 Basis  languages in Humboldt 1830, including Basque (isolate), Greenlandic (Eskimo-Aleut), Saami (Uralic), Tahitian, Malay (both Malayo-Polynesian), Indo-European (e.g. Sanskrit, Ancient Greek), Semitic languages, American languages (e.g. Quechua, Totonaca, Huasteca, Mapuche, Tamanaca, Chayma)
 Source  Humboldt 1830, as interpreted in Plank 1989: 302; Plank 1994b: 232

← Back to Universals Archive

Discussion
Counterexamples
Ancient Greek (Indo-European), Classical Arabic (Semitic, Afro-Asiatic) and Aleut (Eskimo-Aleut) (Plank 1989: 303).
Notes
1. See also discussion in Plank 1989: 305, 316.2. Cf. Greenberg’s 1988 claim #1409.
Comment
Frans Plank · 3 Aug 2006
1. See also discussion in Plank 1989: 305, 316.

2. Cf. Greenberg's 1988 claim <a class="innerLink" href="browse.php?entry_id=1409"><img src="../img/entry.gif" border="0">.