Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1851: Original If a lateral is velarized, it happens to have a lowering effect on all vowels. Standardized Vowels tend to be lower in…

Universal 1867: Original Baby talk is also characterized by:high percentage of questions;frequent use of tags;here-and-now semantics;high semantic continuity between pairs of utterances;striking shifts in pronoun…

Universal 1883: Original A split between 1st and 2nd person versus 3rd person marking is more likely with a verb marked for direct or sensory…

Universal 1899: Original Processess of pronominal reference for showing degrees of respect or social distance occur more commonly in reference to individuals that in reference…

Universal 1915: polysynthesis ⇒ ¬ semantically significant determiners Original The lack of semantically significant determiners seems to be a property of the polysynthetic languages as…

Universal 1931: local indefinite is borrowed ⇒ temporal indefinite is borrowed Original If there is a word-form loan of a local indefinite in a language,…

Universal 1947: Original If a language has Class IV predicates requiring non-canonicaly marked A/S, then it also has Class Ia-b, Class IIa-c, Class IIIa-b and…

Universal 1963: Original Stem: CV C Keywords phonotactics, sonority, stem, consonant cluster Domain phonology Type implicational hierarchy Status achronic Quality absolute? Basis impressions Source Butskhrikidze…

Universal 1979: Original rigid type III (verb-final) …Compound verbs. In addition to simple verbs there are compound verbs including such types as (a) noun-like or…

Universal 1995: Original And some [semantic] criteria appear never to define a gender completely. … I have not found a language of any family in…