Category: Universals Archive

Universal 886: back unrounded vowel ⇒ front unrounded vowel Original A back unrounded vowel implies a front unrounded vowel at the same tongue height. Standardized…

Universal 902: omnisyllabic tone ⇒ monosyllabic morphemes Original There appears to be a necessary connection between omnisyllabic tone and monosyllabic morphemes. Standardized IF tone is…

Universal 918: /f/ ⇒ /w-v/ Original The presence of the voiceless labial fricative phoneme /f/ in a system presupposes the simultaneous presence of the voiced…

Universal 934: Original Only high vowels undergo consonantalization. Standardized IF a vowel undergoes consonantalization, THEN it must be a high one. Keywords vowel, consonantalization, syllabic,…

Universal 950: Original If direct and indirect/non-direct objects are distinguished in their coding, then they also differ in their syntactic behaviour (but not necessarily the…

Universal 966: O V ⇒ N PluralWord;V O ⇒ PluralWord N Original Plural words tend to follow the noun in OV languages and precede in…

Universal 982: locative comparative ⇒ ¬ SVO; orlocative comparative ⇒ SOV v VSO Original If a language has a locative comparative, then it is either…

Universal 2008: Original … lowering of a back nasal vowel implies lowering of the corresponding front nasal vowel. Standardized IF a back nasal vowel is…

Universal 1014: Original If there are analogical changes in their inflectional paradigms, the forms (stems and affixes) of inferior numerals replace more likely the forms…

Universal 1030: Original Only the intense pole – loud stress, high pitch and length – ever has the accentual property. There is no language in…