The American linguist

Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on ...

(1915–2001) proposed a set of

linguistic universals A linguistic universal is a pattern that occurs systematically across natural languages, potentially true for all of them. For example, ''All languages have nouns and verbs'', or ''If a language is spoken, it has consonants and vowels.'' Research i ...

based primarily on a set of 30 languages. The following list is verbatim from the list printed in the appendix of Greenberg's ''Universals of Language'' and "Universals Restated",Greenberg "Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements," ''Universals of Language'', London: MIT Press, pp. 110-113. sorted by context. The numbering is fixed to keep Greenberg's number associations, as these are commonly referenced by number, for example "Greenberg's linguistic universal number 12."

Typology

# "In

declarative sentence In linguistics and grammar, a sentence is a linguistic expression, such as the English example "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." In traditional grammar, it is typically defined as a string of words that expresses a complete thought, ...

s with nominal subject and

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...

, the dominant order is almost always one in which the subject precedes the object." # "In languages with

prepositions Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

, the genitive almost always follows the governing

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...

, while in languages with

postpositions Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

it almost always precedes." # "Languages with dominant VSO order are always

prepositional Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

." # "With overwhelmingly greater than chance frequency, languages with normal SOV order are

postposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

al." # "If a language has dominant SOV order and the genitive follows the governing noun, then the

adjective In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...

likewise follows the noun." # "All languages with dominant VSO order have SVO as an alternative or as the only alternative basic order."

Syntax

Morphology

{{Ordered list , start = 26, "If a language has discontinuous affixes, it always has either prefixing or suffixing or both.", "If a language is exclusively suffixing, it is

al; if it is exclusively prefixing, it is prepositional.", "If both the

derivation Derivation may refer to: Language * Morphological derivation, a word-formation process * Parse tree or concrete syntax tree, representing a string's syntax in formal grammars Law * Derivative work, in copyright law * Derivation proceeding, a proc ...

and

inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...

follow the

root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the su ...

, or they both precede the root, the derivation is always between the root and the inflection.", "If a language has inflection, it always has derivation.", "If the verb has categories of person-

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...

or if it has categories of

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...

, it always has tense-mode categories.", "If either the subject or object noun agrees with the verb in gender, then the adjective always agrees with the noun in gender.", "Whenever the verb agrees with a nominal subject or nominal object in gender, it also agrees in number.", "When number agreement between the noun and verb is suspended and the rule is based on order, the case is always one in which the verb precedes and the verb is in the singular.", "No language has a trial number unless it has a dual. No language has a dual unless it has a

plural The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...

.", "There is no language in which the plural does not have some nonzero

allomorph In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant phonetic form of a morpheme, or, a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning. The term ''allomorph'' describes the realization of phonological variations for a specif ...

s, whereas there are languages in which the singular is expressed only by zero. The dual and the trial are almost never expressed only by zero.", "If a language has the category of gender, it always has the category of number.", "A language never has more gender categories in nonsingular numbers than in the singular.", "Where there is a case system, the only case which ever has only zero allomorphs is the one which includes among its meanings that of the subject of the intransitive verb.", "Where

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are ...

s of both number and case are present and both follow or both precede the noun base, the expression of number almost always comes between the noun base and the expression of case.", "When the

follows the noun, the adjective expresses all the

al categories of the noun. In such cases the noun may lack overt expression of one or all of these categories.", "If in a language the verb follows both the nominal subject and nominal object as the dominant order, the language almost always has a

case system A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nom ...

.", "All languages have

pronominal In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...

categories involving at least three persons and two numbers.", "If a language has gender categories in the noun, it has gender categories in the

pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...

.", "If a language has gender distinctions in the first person, it always has gender distinctions in the second or third person, or in both.", "If there are any gender distinctions in the

of the pronoun, there are some gender distinctions in the singular also."

References

Linguistics lists Linguistic universals