Category: Universals Archive

Universal 296: Original In all languages: if the noun has no case, and the verb has no such categories which could point out the relation…

Universal 312: Original If among syntactic functions of a form there is the subject of intransitive verb of action, then the subject of the intransitive…

Universal 328: Original If a verb agrees with a subject in prefix, then verbs have affixes or clitics which agree with the direct object. Standardized…

Universal 344: VS (transitive verb) ⇒ VS (intransitive verb) Original If the order VS is dominant with transitive verbs, then it will be dominant with…

Universal 360: free word order ⇒ words are longer than one syllable;SVO ⇒ words tend to be monosyllabic Original Words tend to be longer than…

Universal 376: topic markers ⇒ SOV Original If a language has topic markers, then these will always be postpositional and basic word order in the…

Universal 392: Original If a language has the category of group plural at all, it will use it only with singular definite nouns, such as…

Universal 408: (person marker (possessee) = (person marker (INTR (non-perfective))) ⇒(person marker (possessee) = person marker (INTR (perfective))) Original If person marking is phonologically identical…

Universal 424: Original There is no language where, given a constituent class some members of which are immediate constituents of the sentence at the point…

Universal 440: SOV ⇒ SO Neg V v SOV Neg Original In SOV languages the negation is commonly placed before or after the verb. Standardized…