Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1842: Original If a language has a long raised low front unrounded vowel [æ:] then it also has a long high front unrounded vowel…

Universal 1858: Original A retroflexed flap (out-flap) and also other retroflexed consonants have a retroflexing or centralizing influence on a preceding rather than following segment.…

Universal 1874: Original Co-occurrence tendencies in the cross-linguistic coding of subordination, where ‘>>’ means ‘more frequent than’:(a) Case/adposition & agreement eliminated >> case/adposition marking &…

Universal 1890: Original No non-lexical language property can be borrowed unless the borrowing language already includes borrowed lexical items from the same source language. Standardized…

Universal 1906: Original If a language keeps comitative and instrumental formally distinct and if one of the two forms part of the mode of expression…

Universal 1922: Original If more than one modifier occurs before the noun, the order is always Dem < Num < Adj. Standardized When more than…

Universal 1938: Original I know of no language which has one verb stem to indicate giving to the 1st or 3rd person and a suppletive…

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’…