Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1891: Original No member of a constituent class whose members do not serve as domains of accentuation can be included in the class of…

Universal 1907: Original If in a language the marker for instrumental forms part of the mode of expression of predicative possession, then there is a…

Universal 1923: Original If a language has two near-synonymous constructions which differ structurally in linguistic distance, they will differ semantically in (among other things) conceptual…

Universal 1939: Original If a language has denominal derivation, it has nominal derivation (=derivation of something else to nouns). Standardized IF words of whatever word…

Universal 1955: Original … musikalische[r] Ton … kann deshalb nur mit mit Vokalen und stimmhaften Konsonanten verbunden werden. Der Ausfall der Vokale ist hier also…

Universal 1971: Original Tenseless or present-tense copulative expressions connecting nouns are more likely to vary diachronically between zero and overt morphemic marking than other copulative…

Universal 1987: Original In an SOV language with Ex and Cop lexically separate, the Ex tends to be used as an auxiliary combining with the…

Universal 2003: Original … it seems that as long as gender agreement is retained in some targets, the personal pronouns will be one of them.…

Universal 2019: Original All languages have some “emotion terms” (i.e. terms designating some cognitively based feelings). Standardized There are some “emotion terms” (i.e. terms designating…

Universal 2: Postposition ⇒ G N Original In languages with postpositions the genitive almost always precedes the governing noun. Standardized IF adpositions follow their NPs…