Category: Universals Archive

Universal 756: Original I know of no language with more than four injective obstruents. Standardized There are at most four injective obstruents. Keywords consonant, obstruent,…

Universal 772: Original In a given language the number of primary fricatives is very unlikely to be greater than the number of stops and affricates…

Universal 788: Original If in a given language there is only one Primary Nasal Consonant, it is /n/, that is, its most characteristic allophone is…

Universal 804: Vh ⇒ hV; orpostvocalic aspiration ⇒ prevocalic aspiration Original The sequence hV occurs more often than Vh. Standardized IF there is postvocalic aspiration…

Universal 820: Rel N ⇒ ¬ relative pronoun;N Rel ⇒ personal pronoun/relative pronoun Original Prenominal relative clauses never use relative pronouns and only sporadically present…

Universal 836: Voiceless l ⇒ Voiced l Original If there is a voiceless l, there will be a voiced l as well. Standardized IF there…

Universal 852: Original In final clusters, the existence of at least one nasal + liquid cluster implies the existence of at least one obstruent +…

Universal 868: Original In final clusters, the existing of at least one sequence consisting of two voiced obstruents implies the existence of at least one…

Universal 884: front rounded vowel ⇒ front unrounded vowel Original A front rounded vowel implies a front unrounded vowel at the same tongue height. Standardized…

Universal 900: antipassive ⇔ imperfective aspect & low-level object individuation Original The antipassive is correlative with the imperfective aspect and low-level object individuation. Whenever antipassive…