Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1459: Original In no language is there a special form to denote a metaperson ‘speaker+hearer(s)’. Standardized In no language is there a special form…

Universal 1475: Original In an overwhelming majority of languages, if some form denotes the metaperson ‘speaker + hearer(s) + non-participant(s)’, then it cannot denote the…

Universal 1491: Original As a consequence of the tendency of incorporated nouns to be generic in meaning, they do not seem to be able to…

Universal 1507: Original Reciprocal constructions, which are morphologically related to the reflexive constructions, are never (or, at least, far less often) “lighter” then the latter;…

Universal 1523: OS ⇒ articles;OS ⇒ definite articles (≠ demonstrative adjectives) Original All subject-final languages possess articles. With more than chance frequency subject-final languages have…

Universal 1539: verb-initial ⇒ [S and S];verb-initial ⇒ ¬ [S, S and] Original In verb-initial languages, coordinate sentences are commonly expressed as [S and S].…

Universal 1555: Original In verb-initial languages, sentential objects always follow the subject and are very commonly finite as opposed to the more usual non-finite/nominalized treatment…

Universal 1571: Original If a language has homonymous (a) decausative reflexive verb and (b) reflexive verb with the passive sense, it is type (b) that…

Universal 1587: bound nouns ⇒ head-marked possession Original Bound nouns appear to exist only where there is head-marked possession. Standardized IF there is a set…