Category: Universals Archive

Universal 262: Original Among the lexical frequentalia of ergativity one can mention: Classes of possessive and affective verbs (verba habendi and verba sentiendi), forming special…

Universal 278: Original In all languages: if one of the forms of the imperative coincides with a pure (not overtly marked) root, then included in…

Universal 294: Original In all languages: if there is VSO, SVO, SOV, then the verb has prefixes and suffixes. Standardized IF basic order is VSO,…

Universal 310: Original If some nouns have a syntactic form of indefinitive*, then the citation form coincides exactly with this syntactic form. Standardized The citation…

Universal 326: transitive verb agrees in person with DO ⇒ transitive verb agrees in person with SUBJ Original If forms of the transitive verb agree…

Universal 342: Original If the dominant position of the object with respect to the verb depends on morphological characteristics of the object, the dominant order…

Universal 358: Original If in a language an incorporated nominal direct object precedes the verb stem, then the autonomous subject precedes the predicate. Standardized IF…

Universal 374: Original It is impossible for minimal case systems to include, in addition to the basic general case, only a single further case exclusively…

Universal 390: aspirated consonant precedes an unstressed vowel ⇒ aspir. consonant precedes a secondary stressed vowel ⇒ aspirated consonant precedes a primary stressed vowel; Original…

Universal 406: inflections used cross-categorially ⇒ agglutinative (to an extent) Original If a language uses at least some of its inflections cross-categorially, the language is…