Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1971: Original Tenseless or present-tense copulative expressions connecting nouns are more likely to vary diachronically between zero and overt morphemic marking than other copulative…

Universal 1987: Original In an SOV language with Ex and Cop lexically separate, the Ex tends to be used as an auxiliary combining with the…

Universal 2003: Original … it seems that as long as gender agreement is retained in some targets, the personal pronouns will be one of them.…

Universal 2019: Original All languages have some “emotion terms” (i.e. terms designating some cognitively based feelings). Standardized There are some “emotion terms” (i.e. terms designating…

Universal 2: Postposition ⇒ G N Original In languages with postpositions the genitive almost always precedes the governing noun. Standardized IF adpositions follow their NPs…

Universal 20: Original In all languages, if a nominal possessor carries external case, so does the pronominal one. Standardized IF a nominal possessor carries external…

Universal 36: Original If a language has Suffixaufnahme, it will also have at least one of the following NP-internal case marking patterns: complete marking, free…

Universal 52: Original No target may agree in both case and person. Standardized IF a target agrees in case, THEN it will not agree in…

Universal 68: #V ⇒ (N A ⇒ N G) Original If a language has verb-first order, then if the adjective follows the noun, the genitive…

Universal 84: Original If in a language the verb agrees with anything, it agrees with some or all subjects. Standardized IF the verb agrees with…