Category: Universals Archive

Universal 473: accusative/nominative (noun) ⇒ accusative/nominative (1 V 2 V 3 person pronoun) Original If in a language there is an opposition ”accusative/nominative” in the…

Universal 489: SOV ⇒ postposition Original With overwhelmingly greater than chance frequency, languages with normal SOV order are postpositional. Standardized With overwhelmingly greater than chance…

Universal 505: Original If both the derivation and inflection follow the root, or they both precede the root, the derivation is always between the root…

Universal 521: adnominal Adj agreement (noun) ⇒ adnominal Dem agreement (noun) Original In more than one language, and possibly in all, if the adnominal adjective…

Universal 537: Original If in a language, in any sum the larger addend precedes the smaller, then the same order holds for all larger numbers…

Universal 553: Original If a language has both partitive and adjectival Quantifier Noun constructions, the smallest number which employs the partitive is larger than the…

Universal 569: ¬ case (noun) ⇒ article;¬ article ⇒ case (noun) Original No (Indo-European) language does without both morphological case marking and articles. Standardized (In…

Universal 585: increased volume of sound ⇔ increased emphasis; Original Increased volume of sound is systematically correlated with increased emphasis in all languages. Standardized IF…

Universal 601: Original If there is agreement between the verb and some of its noun phrase complements with respect to “affectedness” or quality, the noun…

Universal 617: Original Whenever a language has both a more explicit and less explicit way of forming relative clauses, then the more explicit type will…