Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1854: Original Languages tend to have laterals after grave consonants and nonlaterals after acute. Standardized Languages tend to have laterals after grave consonants and…

Universal 1870: Original Like other registers, baby talk or selected features of it may be extended to secondary uses, e.g. (i) to suggest the speech…

Universal 1886: Original The Cleftability Hierarchy:Subject > Direct Object > Indirect Object > Oblique NP > Genitive NP > Object of Comparison. Syntactic positions on…

Universal 1902: Original Pivotless languages favour isolating morphology and free word order. Standardized IF a language is pivotless, THEN there will be isolating morphology and…

Universal 1918: Original If a language lacks a definite article, it tends to lack a transitive verb of possession (‘have’). Standardized IF there is no…

Universal 1934: local indefinite is borrowed ⇒ impersonal indefinite is borrowed Original If there is a word-form loan of a local indefinite, then it is…

Universal 1950: Original Partial or complete denasalization of nasal consonants would occur only in languages with oral-nasal vowel contrast. Standardized IF there is partial or…

Universal 1966: Original Every language has at least one set of forms or constructions whose primary function (or one of several major functions) is to…

Universal 1982: Original … from the fact that subordinate clauses precede, it might be predicted that quotations would precede the quoting verb. Also, from the…

Universal 1998: Original An obvious suggestion for a universal here [where gender appears in only one person] would be that if a language has a…