Category: Universals Archive

Universal 1024: Original If a language has a parts-of speech system of types 1-2/3 and has Predicate-initial basic word order, then it has HeadModifier basic…

Universal 1040: Original Concerning the relation of word prosody to phrase prosody: Word accent of the final syllable is lost unless phrase final, whereas internal…

Universal 1056: Original If verbs agree in Gender, they are very likely also to agree in Number. Standardized IF verbs agree in gender, THEN they…

Universal 1072: Original Where stress is demarcative (i.e., in languages with fixed stress), syllabification across word boundaries ought to be less likely than where stress…

Universal 1088: Original Nasal systems with more than two place of articulation contrasts usually have a palatal or velar nasal, or both. Standardized IF a…

Universal 1104: Original If any case has zero realization, or a zero allomorph, it will be absolutive or nominative. Standardized If any case has zero…

Universal 1120: Original The nominal dual is likelier to be restricted to natural pairs if the pronominal dual is unrestricted than if it is restricted…

Universal 1136: Original If the dual is conceived of as a paucal limited to two referents, it will extend to all persons of the pronoun…

Universal 1152: numerability ⇒ definitizability ⇒ pronominalizability Original For any given noun phrase, numerability implies definitizability, and definitizability implies pronominalizability. Standardized For any given noun…

Universal 1168: Original If a language possesses simple and distributive-key universal quantifiers, and the two are morphologically related, then the distributive-key quantifier is derived from…