Category: Universals Archive

Universal 601: Original If there is agreement between the verb and some of its noun phrase complements with respect to “affectedness” or quality, the noun…

Universal 617: Original Whenever a language has both a more explicit and less explicit way of forming relative clauses, then the more explicit type will…

Universal 633: SA ⇒ word-class distinction between nouns and adjectives is blurred Original If a language has Suffixaufnahme, then it has blurred word-class distinction between…

Universal 649: Original Reflexive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and pronominalized nouns or pronominalized nominal expressions used in reference, usually indicate greater respect or social distance than…

Universal 665: Original Yes-no question inversion implies a resultant VSO order. In periphrastic constructions the finite auxiliary always occupies the V slot of the inverted…

Universal 681: Original The main principles for the position of negatives:(a) they tend not to be separated from the verb by the subject or the…

Universal 697: Original Standardized IF there are more than five vowels, THEN / C / and also either / ¥ / or / e/ (generally…

Universal 713: grammatical opposition (Du) ⇒ grammatical opposition (Pl) Original If there is any grammatical opposition in the forms of Dual, then there is the…

Universal 729: Original When a marked phonation type is restricted in distribution to certain tones, those tones are in the highest or lowest part of…

Universal 745: Original The Nominal-Switch Universal (part 2):In cases where a nominal Verbal/Nominal-switch is motivated by conditions of Time-Stability, the nominal strategy will encode the…