Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1013: Original A compact nasal consonant implies the the presence of two diffuse consonants, one acute and the other grave. Standardized IF there is…

Universal 1029: Original It is these three features – stress, tone and length (with the possible addition of … glottalization) – which function accentually and…

Universal 1045: Original When tonal contrasts are neutralized in certain syllables, stress seems invariably to be involved, with tone neutralized in unstressed syllables. Standardized IF…

Universal 1061: Original For languages which have agreement both within clauses and within NPs, if clause-constituents agree in Number, NP constituents are very likely also…

Universal 1077: Original Apart from being much rarer than voiceless aspiration, these voiced stops with “murmured” aspiration generally only occur in a system also possessing…

Universal 1093: Original If there is a contrast in glottal feature, length, or other secondary articulation, then that feature is also contrastive in the oral…

Universal 1109: person marking (predicate nouns) ⇒ person marking (predicate verbs) Original There is no language in which person marking applies to predicate nouns and…

Universal 1125: incorporation (pronominal object)⇔ incorporation (possessive pronoun) Original If pronominal objects can be incorporated, then possessor pronouns can also be incorporated;if possessor pronouns can…

Universal 1141: Original The most frequent type of a passive construction is that with a stem affix. Less frequent morphological expression types are auxiliary verbs,…

Universal 1157: definiteness agreement (head noun & relative clause) ⇒ definiteness agreement (head noun & adjective) Original No language has been found where definiteness agreement…