Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1847: Original See IPA. Standardized IF there is a breathy voice palato-alveolar sibilant affricate, THEN there is also a breathy voice velar stop. Keywords…

Universal 1863: Original “… wesshalb die Verdoppelung vorzüglich bei Adjectiven statt findet, da bei der Eigenschaft das besonders auffällt, daß sie nicht als einzelner Körper,…

Universal 1879: Original In many languages there is a strong correlation between the presence of an expletive subject and some definite argument elsewhere in the…

Universal 1895: Original A lexical item that is of the “grammatical” type (which type includes at least conjunctions and adpositions) cannot be included in the…

Universal 1911: Original If a language has an optative mood, it also has a subjunctive or an imperative mood. Standardized IF there is an optative…

Universal 1927: Original If nothing else in the language agrees with nouns in terms of class, numeral expressions will. Standardized IF anything other than numerals…

Universal 1943: Original It appears to be only indicators of the 1st and 2nd person which combine to form new pronouns. (but see Comments) Standardized…

Universal 1959: Original … languages have special restrictions for the word-initial and word-final positions that are not valid for every syllable onset and coda, respectively.…

Universal 1975: Original When a language with a full copula begins to lose it, or when a language with a zero copula begins to develop…

Universal 1991: Original As a “natural” semantic shift alternative (a) [human vs. non-human > human male vs. other] is much less motivated than alternative (b)…