Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1467: Original In an overwhelming majority of languages, there is no special form to denote the metaperson ‘hearer(s) + non-participant(s)’. Standardized In an overwhelming…

Universal 1483: Original If in a language there is a pronominal form denoting the dual of the metapersons ‘hearer’, ‘hearer + non-participant’ and/or ‘non-participant’, then…

Universal 1499: Original Languages with serial verb constructions tend to have VO ordering with verb serialization andone object per verb (but some permit two objects);…

Universal 1515: OS & transitive verbs show agreement ⇒ s-V-o Original If transitive verbs in subject-final languages present agreement at all, then they have a…

Universal 1531: verb-initial ⇒ prefixes Original Verb-initial languages evidence significant prefixing, though normally there is some suffixing as well. There is a possibility of ambi-fixing…

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…