Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1584: kin terms and/or body parts > part-whole and/or spatial relations > culturally basic possessed items Original Semantic scale of inalienable possession: kin terms…

Universal 1600: Original If a language has DPs at all, it has DPs of type e. If it has no DPs distinct from NPs, it…

Universal 1616: subject pro-drop ⇔ inflectional paradigms of verbs are morphologically uniform Original The Null Subject Parameter:Null subjects are permitted in all and only languages…

Universal 1632: polysynthesis ⇒ Wh-movement Original In polysynthetic languages, interrogative phrases are constrained to appear in clause-initial position. Standardized IF there is polysynthesis, THEN interrogative…

Universal 1648: Original The great majority of pronominalization strategies, regardless of language type, favour dependent-marking pattern. Standardized IF relative clause formation involves pronominalization, THEN it…

Universal 1664: SOV ⇒ rheme immediately precedes the verb Original In SOV languages, the usual place of sentence stress and hence that of rheme is…

Universal 1680: Original Habitual grams tend to come from verbs meaning ‘live’, ‘know’ or ‘be used to’. Standardized Habitual grams tend to come from verbs…

Universal 1696: Original The Shell Law:In general, a shell seems to be the more preferred, the less similar the head and (the mirror image of)…

Universal 1712: Original The Attractiveness of Bodies:A body is the more attractive: (a) the more heavily its syllable is accented relative to the preceding syllable,…

Universal 1728: Original If any non-bound noun phrase constituent can occur nominally, so can all other more peripherally ordered ones. Standardized IF any non-bound noun…