Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1798: Original There is a tendency for obstruents to be devoiced more often finally then initially. Standardized IF obstruents are devoiced initially, THEN they…

Universal 1814: Original Standardized IF there is a labialized voiceless uvular fricative, THEN there is a also voiceless uvular fricative. Keywords fricative, labial, uvular, voice…

Universal 1830: Original Standardized IF there is a laryngealized voiced palatal approximant, THEN there is also a glottal stop. Keywords stop, approximant, palatal, glottal, laryngeal,…

Universal 1846: Original Standardized IF there is a voiced dental trill, THEN there is also a voiceless dental stop. Keywords stop, trill, dental, voice Domain…

Universal 1862: Original The acute/grave opposition of compact nasal consonants implies an identical opposition of compact oral stops. Standardized IF there is a acute/grave opposition…

Universal 1878: Original Deverbalization Hierarchy:If a verbal form inflects for tense-aspect-modality (TAM) like a predicated verb, then it will take subject and object dependents like…

Universal 1894: Original No inflectional affixes can belong to the set of properties borrowed fro a language unless at least one derivational affix also belongs…

Universal 1910: Original If a language has modal particles, it also has modal adverbials. Standardized IF there are modal particles, THEN there are modal adverbials.…

Universal 1926: Original There is an apparently universal iconic tendency in diminutives and augmentatives: diminutives tend to contain high front vowels, whereas augmentatives tend to…

Universal 1942: Original One generally unremarked fact is that 2nd person plurals never appear to make a distinction between a plurality of addressees and combinations…