Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1962: Original Within lexical morphemes of the shape C1VC2V, the sonority of C1 tends to be less than that of C2, with C1 tending…

Universal 1978: Original rigid type III (verb-final) …Conjunctive verb form. There is a frequently-used, non-final verb form, a “conjunctive”, with the semantic value ‘having done…

Universal 996: Original [Unfortunately, or luckily,] all grammars leak. Standardized All grammars leak. Keywords analogy, iconicity, economy, plumbing Domain phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, etc. Type…

Universal 2010: Original Overall Dependency Hierarchy between Grammatical Systems: 1. Polarity (I)2. Tense; Aspect; Evidentiality (II)3. { Person; Reference classification (gender etc.) (III)4. { Number…

Universal 2026: Original voiceless geminate stops should be preferred over voiced ones, due to aerodynamic concerns. Standardized IF there are voiced word-initial geminate stops, THEN…

Universal 11: OV ⇒ agglutinative Original Consistent OV languages tend to be agglutinative in their morphology. Standardized IF basic order is consistently OV, THEN the…

Universal 27: SA with ligative ⇒ Internal Ligative External Original In Suffixaufnahme constructions the ligative (if there is one) is always ordered between the internal…

Universal 43: Original New (not borrowed) case forms enter the nominal morphology through the affixation of adpositions, but such a development is possible only if…

Universal 59: Original When any or all of these items — demonstrative, numeral, descriptive adjective — precede the noun, they are always found in that…

Universal 75: N Num ⇒ N A;equivalently: A N ⇒ Num N Original If a language has noun before numeral, then it has noun before…