Category: Universals Archive

Universal 224: labial/dental stops ⇒ nasal /oral stops Original The first consonantal opposition is that of nasal and oral stop, which is followed by the…

Universal 240: Erg ⇒ G N & N Adj Original If a language has ergative case marking, it will with far more than chance frequency…

Universal 256: gender (noun) ⇒ the same gender (pronoun) Original If there exists a regular gender (nominal class) distinction in a language, this distinction is…

Universal 272: person V number (non-indicative mood) ⇒ person V number (indicative mood) Original If there is a certain person or number distinction in the…

Universal 288: causative morpheme expresses permissiveness ⇒ causative morpheme expresses factitivity Original If a causative morpheme in any language can express permissiveness, it can usually…

Universal 304: three-member passive ⇒ two-member passive Original If there is a three-member passive construction, then there will be a two-member passive construction, derived from…

Universal 320: nominative/accusative (pronouns) ⇒ nominative/accusative (nouns) Original If personal pronouns have an opposition of the syntactic forms of nominative and accusative, then this opposition…

Universal 336: Original If subject of intransitive verb is expressed by a confix, then at least one of its parts (prefixal or/and suffixal) may designate…

Universal 352: Original In a dominant order not more than one of these principles – i.e. , , – can be violated. Standardized In a…

Universal 368: vowel harmony ⇒ agglutinative morphology Original Typically, agglutinative languages, where stems and affixes are bound together more loosely than in flective and introflective…