Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1616: subject pro-drop ⇔ inflectional paradigms of verbs are morphologically uniform Original The Null Subject Parameter:Null subjects are permitted in all and only languages…

Universal 1632: polysynthesis ⇒ Wh-movement Original In polysynthetic languages, interrogative phrases are constrained to appear in clause-initial position. Standardized IF there is polysynthesis, THEN interrogative…

Universal 1648: Original The great majority of pronominalization strategies, regardless of language type, favour dependent-marking pattern. Standardized IF relative clause formation involves pronominalization, THEN it…

Universal 1664: SOV ⇒ rheme immediately precedes the verb Original In SOV languages, the usual place of sentence stress and hence that of rheme is…

Universal 1680: Original Habitual grams tend to come from verbs meaning ‘live’, ‘know’ or ‘be used to’. Standardized Habitual grams tend to come from verbs…

Universal 1696: Original The Shell Law:In general, a shell seems to be the more preferred, the less similar the head and (the mirror image of)…

Universal 1712: Original The Attractiveness of Bodies:A body is the more attractive: (a) the more heavily its syllable is accented relative to the preceding syllable,…

Universal 1728: Original If any non-bound noun phrase constituent can occur nominally, so can all other more peripherally ordered ones. Standardized IF any non-bound noun…

Universal 1744: Original Provided ordinal numerals are formally distinguished from cardinal numerals and one is based on/ derived from/ more complex than the other (rather…

Universal 1760: ##_V ⇒ V_V, V#_V, V_#V ⇒ V_#C, V_##, V_C#(#), VC_## Original Environmental hierarchy of consonantal weakening: initial ⇒ > intervocalic ⇒ final. If…