Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1022: Original If a language has a parts-of speech system of types 1-3/4, then it does not allow variation in the order of Head…

Universal 1038: Original When secondary stress is phonological, it most frequently involves alternations of weak stress (unstressed?) with secondary stress (so the the favourite position…

Universal 1054: Original If verbs agree in Number, they are very likely to agree in Person. Standardized IF verbs agree in number, THEN they are…

Universal 1070: Original If in a language phonemic stress co-exists with phonemic quantity, one of the two elements is subordinate to the other, and three,…

Universal 1086: Original We have not found a single instance in which a nasalized low vowel is lower than the corresponding oral vowel, whereas the…

Universal 1102: Original Yet all human languages classify actions into two basic types: those involving one obligatory participant, which are described by intransitive clauses, and…

Universal 1118: ¬Du (3 person pronoun ) ⇒ ¬Du (noun) Original If the pronominal dual does not extend to the 3rd person, there very likely…

Universal 1134: Original If a dual, or any other number, is differentiated for a particular person of non-pronominal agreement forms, there will be a dual,…

Universal 1150: distributive-share word ⇒ distributive-share numeral word Original If a language has a distributive-share word, it has a distributive-share numeral word. Standardized IF there…

Universal 1166: Original For any particular language, definiteness contrast obligatorily expressed for any noun phrase implies such contrast in the object noun phrase. Standardized IF…