Category: Universals Archive

Universal 303: ergative construction (non-past V imperfect) V. passive voice (non-past V imperfect) ⇒⇒ ergative construction (past V perfective) V. passive voice (past V perfective)…

Universal 319: Original If in a language there is a syntactic form of the absolutive, it also has a syntactic form of the ergative. Standardized…

Universal 335: Original If subject of transitive verb is expressed by a confix, then at least one of the parts of such a confix (prefixal…

Universal 351: Original In a dominant order the subject and the object are juxtaposed, i.e. no verb is placed between them. Standardized In a dominant…

Universal 367: agglutinative ⇒ phonological structure of affixes is similar to the structure of stems;flective ⇒ affixes are shorter and structurally simpler than stems Original…

Universal 383: Original The more topic-prominent a language, the fewer subject-creating constructions it will have. Standardized The higher the topic-prominence, the fewer subject-creating constructions. Keywords…

Universal 399: inflectional number(1 &/V. 2 person pronoun ) ⇒ inflectional number (3 person pronoun) Original If a language indicates number in the 1st and/or…

Universal 415: Original Affixes are ordered so that their increasing distance from the stem reflects decreasing semantic relevance to it. Standardized Affixes are ordered so…

Universal 431: overt plural marker (non-human/inanimate NP) ⇒ overt plural marker (human/animate NP) Original The following correlation holds: overt marking of plurality in non-human (or…

Universal 447: verb-initial ⇒ preposition V case prefixes Original If a language has verb-initial word order, then it has prepositions or case prefixes. Standardized IF…