Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1318: Original Only the verbal domain can be the target of long scrambling. Standardized IF there is long scrambling, THEN its landing site will…

Universal 1334: Prep ⇒ ((RelN ⇒ GenN) & (GenN ⇒ AdjN) & (AdjN ⇒ DemN)) Original Prepositional Noun-Modifier Hierarchy (PrNMH): If a language is prepositional,…

Universal 1350: Original Division is always expressed as multiplication by a fraction. Only units or multiples of units are dividends, and the denominator of the…

Universal 1366: Original There is a universal principle that in numeral classifier languages classifier concatenates with a quantifier, locative, demonstrative, or predicate to form a…

Universal 1382: Original No language with SVO or VSO basic order will have a clause final auxiliary. Standardized IF basic word order is SVO or…

Universal 1398: Original No language has adverbial predicates which are expressed as argument-internal clitics that are postposed to the constituents that they are bound to.…

Universal 1414: Original No language has constructions whose function is to place new topics at the end of the sentence. Standardized New topics are never…

Universal 1430: possessive suffixes on nouns ⇒ ¬ (overt copula form (of “to be”) in the present tense) Original If a language has possessive suffixes…

Universal 1446: Original In all languages, if some form denotes the metaperson ‘hearer’ in the singular, it cannot denote the metaperson ‘speaker’. Standardized IF some…

Universal 1462: Original In an overwhelming majority of languages, if some form denotes the metaperson ‘speaker + hearer(s)’ and/or ‘speaker + non-participant(s)’, it cannot denote…