What is "universal semantic constraint" in the field of linguistics?

Answer 1

Languages across the world all have certain semantic properties that are considered "universal." For example, every language has nouns, verbs, and adjectives (universals are not limited to lexicon but span across pragmatics, morphology, and beyond). A semantic constraint would be a limitation to what a language can express, since semantics in linguistics deals with the meaning of words. Therefore, a universal semantic constraint would involve limitations existing across all languages to what is and is not possible to express.