Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1685: Original If an SOV language deranks its consecutive chains, it will derank anterior predicates. Standardized IF basic order is SOV and there is…

Universal 1701: Original The Coda Law:A syllable coda is the more preferred: (a) the smaller the number of speech sounds in the coda, (b) the…

Universal 1717: adnominally possessors co-occur with demonstratives ⇒ nominally used possessives possessives co-occur with definite articles Original If possessive determiners co-occur with demonstratives, then nominal…

Universal 1733: Original No noun phrase constituent carries more gender, number, and/or case inflection in adnominal use than it does in pronominal use. Standardized IF…

Universal 1749: Original Provided at least some ordinal numerals are formally distinguished from cardinal numerals, if the distinction is by suppletion for higher numbers, then…

Universal 1765: Original Nasal effacement applies preferentially to weak nasals, thus to velar nasals in preference to dental or labial nasals. Standardized IF dental or…

Universal 1781: Original If a language has stop + fricative onset clusters, then it has stop + stop onset clusters. Standardized IF there are stop…

Universal 1797: Original Preferential Vowel-Lengthening Parameter:Vowel lengthening preferably occurs before the cluster nasal + fricative than nasal + stop.Vowel lengthening preferably occurs before the cluster…

Universal 1813: Original Standardized IF there is a nasalized high back rounded vowel, THEN there is a high back rounded vowel. Keywords vowel, nasal, high,…

Universal 1829: Original Standardized IF there is a prenasalized labialized voiced velar stop, THEN there is also a prenasalized voiced bilabial stop. Keywords stop, velar,…