Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1735: Original If an article is the sole carrier of gender and/or number and/or case, it will co-occur with definite and generic nouns. Standardized…

Universal 1751: Original If ordinal numerals are distinguished from cardinal numerals for numbers higher than 1, then they are also distinguished for 1. Standardized IF…

Universal 1767: Original Nasal effacement applies to unstressed nasals in preference to stressed nasals. Standardized IF stressed nasals in stressed syllables are effaced [deleted?], THEN…

Universal 1783: Original The Length Strategy: The longer a sentence is, the more likely it is to be classified as belonging to a more formal…

Universal 1799: Original There is a tendency for consonants to front initially and back finally. Standardized There is a tendency for consonants to front when…

Universal 1815: Original A voiceless dental-alveolar sibilant ejective affricate [”ts‘”] does not occur without a voiceless dental-alveolar sibilant fricative [”s”]. Standardized IF there is a…

Universal 1831: Original Standardized IF there is a laryngealized voiced labial-velar approximant, THEN there is also a glottal stop. Keywords stop, approximant, labial-velar, glottal, laryngeal,…

Universal 1847: Original See IPA. Standardized IF there is a breathy voice palato-alveolar sibilant affricate, THEN there is also a breathy voice velar stop. Keywords…

Universal 1863: Original “… wesshalb die Verdoppelung vorzüglich bei Adjectiven statt findet, da bei der Eigenschaft das besonders auffällt, daß sie nicht als einzelner Körper,…

Universal 1879: Original In many languages there is a strong correlation between the presence of an expletive subject and some definite argument elsewhere in the…