Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1698: Original The Rhyme Law (conjectured):There must be degrees of preference for combinations of nuclei with codas. For instance, offgliding nuclear speech sounds often…

Universal 1714: Original General Syllabication Law:A syllabication is the more preferred: (a) the better the resulting syllable contact is and (b) the better that syllable…

Universal 1730: Original The phonological body of any noun phrase constituent is never more substantial in adnominal use than in pronominal use. Standardized The phonological…

Universal 1746: Original Ordinal numerals are likelier to be borrowed than corresponding cardinal numerals. Standardized IF a cardinal numeral is a borrowing, THEN the corresponding…

Universal 1762: Original Back consonants (velars) are more likely to undergo deletion than front consonants (labials and dentals). Standardized IF front consonants are deleted, THEN…

Universal 1778: Original If assibilation occurs before a , then it must occur before e.If assibilation occurs before e, then it must occur before i.…

Universal 1794: Original Nasalization before intervocalic nasals was found to occur only if nasalization phenomena were already evident in tautosyllabic (VN$) sequences. Standardized IF there…

Universal 1810: Original The presence of uvular stops in a language implies the presence of velar stops. Standardized IF there are uvular stops, THEN there…

Universal 1826: Original If a language is an SOV language, then nominalizations are the most likely to show the ModifierNoun syntactic pattern, other possessives are…

Universal 1842: Original If a language has a long raised low front unrounded vowel [æ:] then it also has a long high front unrounded vowel…