Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1954: Original Die Gründe, warum die eine Art der Sprache die alte Sprechweise, die unter der Herrschaft des musikalischen Tons stand, beibehielt, während die…

Universal 1970: Original There are severe limitations on the kinds of synchronic patterns and diachronic restructurings which may occur in existential-copulative-auxiliary systems, and such patterns…

Universal 1986: Original If Ex and Cop are lexically separate, and they are in a suppletive relation with verbs meaning ‘become’ and ‘stay’, then ‘become’…

Universal 2002: Original The Agreement Hierarchy:attributive < predicate < relative pronoun < personal pronoun(i) Possible agreement pattern are constrained as follows: As we move rightwards…

Universal 2018: Original All languages have “emotive” interjections (i.e. interjections expressing cognitively based feelings). Standardized There are “emotive” interjections (i.e. interjections expressing cognitively based feelings).…

Universal 1: Adp NP ⇒ N G Original In languages with prepositions the genitive almost always follows the governing noun. Standardized IF adpositions precede their…

Universal 19: SA nominal possessor ⇒ SA pronominal possessor Original In all languages, if Suffixaufnahme occurs with nominal possessors, it also occurs with pronominal ones.…

Universal 35: SA ⇒ adjectives agree with their heads in the same category Original If a language has Suffixaufnahme, then adjectives agree with their heads…

Universal 51: Original In agreement of governors (verbs, adpositions, possessum noun phrases) with dependent NPs (NP external agreement), except those NPs bearing a concrete semantic…

Universal 67: VSO ⇒ (N A ⇒ N G) Original If a language has VSO word order, then if the adjective follows the noun, the…