Month: May 2020

Universal 385: Original The most neutral position for focus in a language will be the position normally occupied by the direct object. Standardized The most…

Universal 384: Original If in a language topic-comment structure is coded by intonation, then primary stress always falls inside the focus. Standardized IF topic-comment structure…

Universal 383: Original The more topic-prominent a language, the fewer subject-creating constructions it will have. Standardized The higher the topic-prominence, the fewer subject-creating constructions. Keywords…

Universal 382: Original The more topic-prominent a language, the less restricted the distribution of zero anaphora in that language. Standardized The higher the topic-prominence, the…

Universal 381: Original All languages have constructions whose function is to place topic, both old and new, before comment. Standardized All languages have constructions whose…

Universal 380: Original Every language has “double-subject”* constructions. Standardized Every language has “double-subject”* constructions. Keywords topic, comment Domain syntax, pragmatics Type unconditional Status achronic Quality…

Universal 379: Original Every language has cleft constructions, either wh-clefts or it-clefts or both. Standardized Every language has cleft constructions, either wh-clefts or it-clefts or…

Universal 378: Original Every language has syntactic topic constructions in which an expression which refers to the topic of the sentence is adjoined to the…

Universal 377: topic marker ⇒ high topic prominence Original If a language has topic markers, then it will be highly topic prominent (in the sense…

Universal 376: topic markers ⇒ SOV Original If a language has topic markers, then these will always be postpositional and basic word order in the…