Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1971: Original Tenseless or present-tense copulative expressions connecting nouns are more likely to vary diachronically between zero and overt morphemic marking than other copulative…

Universal 1987: Original In an SOV language with Ex and Cop lexically separate, the Ex tends to be used as an auxiliary combining with the…

Universal 2003: Original … it seems that as long as gender agreement is retained in some targets, the personal pronouns will be one of them.…

Universal 2019: Original All languages have some “emotion terms” (i.e. terms designating some cognitively based feelings). Standardized There are some “emotion terms” (i.e. terms designating…

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…

Universal 83: Original There is no language where the accusative is a marked case and non-accusative objects gain that marking in dative-shifting. Standardized When direct…