Category: Universals Archive

Universal 2000: Original If a particular target type can mark agreement in gender then in many languages it must. … This may be called “enforced”…

Universal 2016: Original In all languages, some feelings can be described as “good” and some as “bad” (while some may be viewed as neither “good”…

Universal 16: Original In almost all instances of Suffixaufnahme, the segmental marker of internal case is closer to the stem of the attributive nominal than…

Universal 32: SA ⇒ internal case without external case Original If a language has Suffixaufnahme, it also has the internal case occurring without the external…

Universal 48: Original The noun phrase (NP) internal distribution of case between head noun and any agreeing constituents is determined by dominance relations defined on…

Universal 64: Original In nominative-accusative languages the causee of causative verbs derived from transitive verbs is an oblique object, whereas in ergative languages it is…

Universal 80: Original There is no language in which the subject must be first demoted (via passivization) before it can be relativized. Standardized Relativization is…

Universal 96: Postp ⇒ ((A N v Rel N ⇒ Dem N & Num N & Poss N) & (Dem N v Num N v…

Universal 112: (V O & Adv V) ⇒ Adj N;(O V & V Adv) ⇒ N Adj Original If the adverb occurs on the opposite…

Universal 128: Original Of the two arguments in transitive ANCs, the one most likely to lose its sentential dependent-marking and head-marking is the A (except…