Category: Universals Archive

Universal 614: Original When becoming a nasal or determining the place of articulation of adjacent nasals by assimilation, labial velars behave primarily like velars. Standardized…

Universal 630: Original If a language uses pluralization to form portmanteau from ordinary quantifier words, then it forms distributive-share quantifier words by pluralization. Standardized IF…

Universal 646: Original Variation of gender so as to employ one which does not correspond to the notional category of the sex of the referent…

Universal 662: ¬(rising terminal V higher pitched V special stress) yes-no question contour ⇒ postposition Original Nonoccurrence of a rising terminal, higher pitched or special…

Universal 678: initial nonverbal element in SubCl ⇒ postnominal RelCl contain relative pronoun Original Postnominal relative clauses contain relative pronouns only if the language allows…

Universal 694: imperative 1Sg ⇒ imperative 1Pl Original If there is 1st person Singular in the imperative paradigm, then there is a form(s) of 1st…

Universal 710: agglutinative ⇒ vowel harmony;flective ⇒ single main stress accent Original When stem-suffix combinations are morphologically less cohesive (i.e. agglutinative), words are given unity…

Universal 726: Original A low (open) vowel has a lower pitch than a high (close) vowel, other things being equal. Standardized IF a vowel is…

Universal 742: Original The Adjective-Switch Universal:If the nominal strategy partakes in an Adjective-switch, and if that switch is monitored by Time Stability, the nominal strategy…

Universal 758: Original A recurrent feature of injectives which deserves special mention and treatment is that the injective corresponding to a noninjective dental is often…