Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1869: Original Core items of the baby talk register tend to persist for long periods of time. Standardized Core items of the baby talk…

Universal 1885: Original The Cleftability Hierarchy:Subject > Direct Object > Indirect Object > Oblique NP > Genitive NP > Object of Comparison. Standardized IF Object…

Universal 1901: Original If a language exhibits only prenasalized voiceless consonants, voicing is non-contrastive within the consonant system. Standardized IF there are prenasalized voiceless consonants…

Universal 1917: Original If a language lacks a definite article, it tends to lack (fully) indirect speech. Standardized IF there is no definite article, THEN…

Universal 1933: impersonal indefinite is borrowed ⇒ temporal indefinite is borrowed Original If there is a word-form loan of an impersonal indefinite, then it is…

Universal 1949: Original If a language has Class IIIa/Ib predicates requiring non-canonicaly marked A/S, then it also has Class Ia predicates requiring non-canonically marked A/S.…

Universal 1965: Original The Compensatory Principle:The co-occurrence patterns of hetero-organic consonants across a vowel are such that if the first consonant is more sonorous than…

Universal 1981: Original rigid type III (verb-final) …Optional plural. Expression of plural in the noun is optional and is normally absent in nouns when they…

Universal 1997: Original There is no purely morphological system [of gender assignment]. First, they always have a semantic core. … the morphological rules assign the…

Universal 2013: Original It is probably the case that a classifier set always includes a contrast human/nonhuman or animate/inanimate … A gender/noun class system almost…