Category: Universals Archive

Universal 40: Original If a language has Suffixaufnahme both in NPs where the attributive and the head are prosodically separated and in NPs where two…

Universal 56: VSO ⇒ N Adj Original With overwhelmingly more than chance frequency, languages with dominant order VSO have the adjective after the noun. Standardized…

Universal 72: Prep ⇒ (N Dem ⇒ N A) Original If a language has Prep word order, then if the demonstrative determiner follows the noun,…

Universal 88: N Dem ⇒ N Rel;equivalently: Rel N ⇒ Dem N Original If a language has noun before demonstrative, then it has noun before…

Universal 104: Original When noun-phrase internal agreement (in class) is lost, it tends to disappear first on numerals, then on adjectives, then on demonstratives. Standardized…

Universal 120: Original If NP-internal constituents agree in more than two categories, the maximum being four, those will always include number and gender and very…

Universal 136: Original [IF one of the relations of (i) alienability, (ii) inalienability, and (iii) classification is realized formally by a certain construction, THEN no…

Universal 152: noun-like inflection and syntax (lower numerals) ⇒ noun-like inflection and syntax (higher numerals);adjectival inflection and syntax (higher numerals) ⇒ adjectival inflection and syntax…

Universal 168: TO/ FROM ≥ AT Original The morphological complexity of a case marker to signal “direction to” is never less than that of a…

Universal 184: (Acc(3p pronoun) = Acc(Indef noun)) ⇒ (Acc(3p pronoun) = Acc(Def noun)) Original If the accusative-case marker in (3rd person) pronouns and indefinite nouns…