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 M ...

(1915–2001) proposed a set of linguistic universals 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; e.g.: "Greenberg's linguistic universal number 12".

Typology

# "In

declarative sentence Declarative may refer to: * Declarative learning, acquiring information that one can speak about * Declarative memory, one of two types of long term human memory * Declarative programming In computer science, declarative programming is a programm ...

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

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

almost always follows the governing

noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...

, while in languages with postpositions it almost always precedes." # "Languages with dominant VSO order are always prepositional." # "With overwhelmingly greater than chance frequency, languages with normal SOV order are

postposition Adpositions are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositions (which precede their complemen ...

al." # "If a language has dominant SOV order and the

follows the governing noun, then the

adjective An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...

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

affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are Morphological derivation, derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such as ''un-'', ''-ation' ...

es, it always has either

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the word to which it is affixed. Prefixes, like other affixes, can b ...

ing or

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

ing or both." , "If a language is exclusively

ing, it is

al; if it is exclusively

ing, it is

preposition Adpositions are a part of speech, class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various thematic relations, semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositi ...

al." , "If both the derivation and

inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

follow the

root In vascular plants, the roots are the plant organ, 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 bel ...

, 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 most basic 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 can ...

or if it has categories of

gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...

, 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 In many languages, a plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated as pl., pl, , or ), is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than ...

." , "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 in other words, a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning. The term ''allomorph'' describes the realization of phonological variatio ...

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 any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...

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." , "All languages have pronominal 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 (Interlinear gloss, glossed ) 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 part of speech, parts of speech, but so ...

." , "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