Category: Universals Archive

Universal 406: inflections used cross-categorially ⇒ agglutinative (to an extent) Original If a language uses at least some of its inflections cross-categorially, the language is…

Universal 422: verb agreement with members following the verb ⇒ verb agreement with members preceding the verb Original There is no language where, given a…

Universal 438: ergative alignment ⇔ high complexity Original Ergative alignment is associated with high complexity. This correlation is not direct one, but a consequence of…

Universal 454: personal possessive prefixes ⇒ G N Original Personal possessive prefixes always imply a GN order, but not the converse; for personal possessive suffixes…

Universal 470: ergative/nominative (1 V (V.) 2 person pronoun) ⇒ ergative/nominative (noun) Original If in a language there is an opposition “ergative/nominative” in the declension…

Universal 486: Original If a language uses a non-zero case marking for a direct object on the animacy/definiteness hierarchies, then it uses a non-zero case…

Universal 502: pronominal object follows the verb ⇒ nominal object follows the verb Original If the pronominal object follows the verb, so does the nominal…

Universal 518: gender (Plural pronoun) ⇒ gender (Singular pronoun) Original If there are any gender distinctions in the plural of the pronoun, there are some…

Universal 534: Original When a number is expressed by subtraction, or when a subtraction occurs as a constituent of a complex expression, the subtrahend is…

Universal 550: Original The order noun-numeral is favoured in indefinite and approximative constructions. Standardized In indefinite and approximative constructions, the numeral tends to follow the…