Greenberg’s U(niversal) 20: new insights and perspectives

Several attempts have been made in order to formulate an updated version of Greenberg’s (1966 [1963]) U(niversal) 20. Although the various authors’ goals and methodologies vary from one another, I tried to compare their observations, and it was a profitable effort. By connecting the dots among their works, I came up with a personal, brand new analysis of U20 which explains Cinque’s (2005) and Dryer’s (2018) data, both qualitatively and quantitatively. As the reader will see below, I claim that a «double F(inal)- O(ver)-F(inal) C(ondition)» can be on the right track to pursue a description and an explanation of U20: firstly, Greenberg’s U(niversal) 18 derives as a corollary, since the «second» FOFC I posit complies with Culbertson’s (2017) reflections on U18; secondly, such an assumption reinforces the iconicity principles formulated by Rijkhoff (2002) and Dryer (2018); thirdly, it suggests that in order to describe and explain U20 one needs to focus on what languages cannot generate, rather than on what they can, as Pullum (2013) and Müller (2016) point out. Lastly, a unifying proposal which draws from different methodologies suggests that in the future it will be necessary to pinpoint a consistent definition of the categories included within U20.