Category: Universals Archive

Universal 712: Original Standardized IF there is no opposition of front and back fricatives, THEN the s-sound is not sharply differentiated from an ∫-articulation. Keywords…

Universal 729: Original When a marked phonation type is restricted in distribution to certain tones, those tones are in the highest or lowest part of…

Universal 745: Original The Nominal-Switch Universal (part 2):In cases where a nominal Verbal/Nominal-switch is motivated by conditions of Time-Stability, the nominal strategy will encode the…

Universal 761: Original Syllabic initial position is favoured for glottalic consonants in general. Standardized IF there are glottalic consonants in positions other than syllable-initial, THEN…

Universal 777: Original Languages usually have at least three primary oral stops. Standardized There are at least three primary oral stops. Keywords consonant, oral, stop…

Universal 793: Original In a given language, the number of Secondary Nasal Consonants is never greater than the number of Primary Nasal Consonants. Standardized IF…

Universal 809: wide & narrow vowels ⇒ (nasal & oral stops) & (labials & dentals) Original In child language, these two consonantal oppositions (nasal vs.…

Universal 825: Original If a language places relative pronouns that are not interrogative in form in initial position in postnominal relative clauses, then either that…

Universal 841: Original In all initial and final clusters, if there are sequences of length m and n and m >n, then the proportion of…

Universal 857: Original In initial and final clusters a lateral is never followed immediately by an r-type sound. In the initial system the sequence r…