Universal 3: ergative alignment ⇒ also accusative alignment Original Grammatical systems with ergativity tend to have ergative-accusative splits. Standardized IF alignment is ergative for some…
Category: Universals Archive
Universals Archive
Universal 17: SA head-present ⇒ SA head-missing Original If Suffixaufnahme occurs with the head present, it also occurs with the head missing. Standardized IF Suffixaufnahme…
Universal 33: SA ⇒ external case without internal case Original If a language has Suffixaufnahme, it also has the external case occurring without the internal…
Universal 49:
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Universal 49: Original Case and number agreement of attributive adjectives are determined independently: number agreement is controlled by head nouns; case is distributed among the…
Universal 65: SOV ⇒ (A N ⇒ G N) Original If a language has SOV word order, then if the adjective precedes the noun, the…
Universal 81:
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Universal 81: Original There is no language in which an accusative object must be first demoted via dative-shift before it can be relativized. Standardized Relativization…
Universal 97: Prep ⇒ (A Adv ⇒ A Mark Stand) Original If a language has Prep word order, then if the adverb follows the adjective…
Universal 113: Adj Qual ⇒ N Adj Original Adj Qual languages exhibit a clear tendency to be N Adj. Standardized IF adjectives precede qualifiers, THEN…
Universal 129:
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Universal 129: Original Either all the arguments in a transitive ANC retain their sentential dependent-marking or at least one of them genitivizes (except for the…
Universal 145:
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Universal 145: Original SOV correlates positively with non-verbal status of predicative adjectives, whereas SVO and VSO have a tendency to favour verbal predicative adjectives. Standardized…