Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1468: Original In an overwhelming majority of languages, if some form denotes the metaperson ‘hearer(s) + non-participant(s)’, then it also denotes the metaperson ‘hearer’…

Universal 1484: Original If in a language there is a pronominal form denoting the trial of the metapersons ‘hearer’ and ‘hearer(s) + non-participant(s)’ and/or the…

Universal 1500: Original Loan words maintain formal anomalies only of those types that are present in other peripheral classes of language. If an anomaly arises…

Universal 1516: OS ⇒ little nominal case marking Original Subject-final languages have relatively little nominal case marking. Standardized IF subject full noun phrases follow object…

Universal 1532: verb-initial ⇒ agglutination V polysynthesis Original Verb-initial languages may be agglutinative and polysynthetic. Standardized IF basic order is verb-initial, THEN the morphology may…

Universal 1548: verb-initial ⇒ several articles Original In verb-initial languages, the existence of several articles (definite, indefinite, specific, plural, proper noun) is much more common…

Universal 1564: deagentive RC ⇒ objective RC ⇒ subjective RC Original As a rule, the existence of objective reflexive constructions presupposes a developed system of…

Universal 1580: Original If a language has several causative affixes, the means for deriving causatives from intransitives are more varied than those for forming causatives…

Universal 1596: Original Instantiations of AUX* which occur sentence-finally (in surface-order) are limited to languages such as Japanese which are commonly termed ‘rigid verb-final’. Standardized…

Universal 1612: SOV & NModifier ⇒ Modifier-N agreement Original In SOV languages, when the expected order of Modifier-Noun does not occur, agreement [between noun and…