Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1580: Original If a language has several causative affixes, the means for deriving causatives from intransitives are more varied than those for forming causatives…

Universal 1596: Original Instantiations of AUX* which occur sentence-finally (in surface-order) are limited to languages such as Japanese which are commonly termed ‘rigid verb-final’. Standardized…

Universal 1612: SOV & NModifier ⇒ Modifier-N agreement Original In SOV languages, when the expected order of Modifier-Noun does not occur, agreement [between noun and…

Universal 1628: Original If the language has the basic order “topic-before-focus”, then the secondary topic would precede the focus. Correspondingly, in languages where subject precedes…

Universal 1644: SOV ⇒ ¬ verb phrase serialization Original There is a strong tendency for SOV languages to display verb concatenation rather than verb phrase…

Universal 1660: Original In no language, the most common word for ‘first generation descendant’ is not the same as the most common word for ‘person…

Universal 1676: Original Standardized IF there is a phoneme all of whose allophones are variants of /f/, THEN there is a phoneme whose characteristic variant…

Universal 1692: absolute posterior consecutive deranking ⇒ VSO Original Languages with absolute posterior consecutive deranking typically have VSO word order. Standardized IF there is absolute…

Universal 1708: Original The Strength Assimilation Law:If Consonantal Strength is assimilated in a syllable contact, the Consonantal Strength of the stronger speech sound decreases. Standardized…

Universal 1724: Original Nominally used demonstratives never occur with the non-bound definite article. Standardized When a demonstrative is used nominally (forming an NP of its…