Category: Universals Archive

Universal 369: Original In agglutinative languages casual or fast speech shows less phonological deletion, fusion, and weakening than in flective ones, owing to the lack…

Universal 385: Original The most neutral position for focus in a language will be the position normally occupied by the direct object. Standardized The most…

Universal 401: cumulation & person-number inflection ⇒ person-number is expressed cumulatively Original If in a language any inflectional categories are expressed cumulatively and the language…

Universal 417: verb agreement ¬(INTR-SUBJ) ⇒ verb agreement (INTR-SUBJ) Original There is no language which includes sentences where the verb agrees with a constituent distinct…

Universal 433: aspect V tense (non-indicative mood) ⇒ aspect V tense (indicative mood) Original If there is a certain distinction as to aspect or tense…

Universal 449: Gen N (nominally possessed construction) ⇒ Gen Pro (pronominal construction) Original A Gen N constituent order in a nominally possessed construction implies the…

Universal 465: Original With more than chance frequency, in sentences meaning ‘a person/thing belongs to a certain group of persons/things’ (like ‘Socrates is Greek’), the…

Universal 481: progressive aspect is signalled by a suffix ⇒ tense & mood & person suffixes follow progressive aspect suffix Original If progressive is signaled…

Universal 497: VSO => initial interrogative word;SOV ⇒ ¬initial interrogative word Original If a language has dominant order VSO in declarative sentences, it always puts…

Universal 513: gender ⇒ number Original If a language has the category of gender, it always has the category of number. Standardized IF there is…