Month: May 2020

Universal 415: Original Affixes are ordered so that their increasing distance from the stem reflects decreasing semantic relevance to it. Standardized Affixes are ordered so…

Universal 414: Original With the exception of some North-Western Caucasian languages, no European language has person-number cross-reference prefixed to possessed nouns. Standardized Person-number cross-reference markers…

Universal 413: SOV ⇒ Gender affixes on N are suffixed;prefixed Gender affixes ⇒ VO ; (or: prefixed Gender affixes ⇒ ¬SOV) Original If a language…

Universal 412: postposition ⇒ Gender affixes on N are suffixed;Gender affixes on N are prefixed ⇒ preposition Original If a language is postpositional, Gender affixes…

Universal 411: C [ +v, !+son ]h ⇒ C [ -v, !+obst ]h or aspirated voiced consonant (esp. sonorant) ⇒ aspirated voiceless consonant (esp. obstruent)…

Universal 410: ((person marker (possessee) = person marker (INTR)) (non-subordinate)) ⇒((person marker (possessee) = person marker (INTR)) (subordinate)) Original If person marking is phonologically identical…

Universal 409: ((person marker (possessee) = person marker (verb(non-indicative))) ⇒((person marker (possessee) = person marker (verb (indicative))) Original If person marking is phonologically identical for…

Universal 408: (person marker (possessee) = (person marker (INTR (non-perfective))) ⇒(person marker (possessee) = person marker (INTR (perfective))) Original If person marking is phonologically identical…

Universal 407: (person marker (possessee) = person marker (INTR)) ⇒ (person marker (possessee) = person marker (TR)) Original If person marking in possessed nouns and…

Universal 406: inflections used cross-categorially ⇒ agglutinative (to an extent) Original If a language uses at least some of its inflections cross-categorially, the language is…