[erdevs]

Does the hypothesis in question seem to hold for, say, the world's top 10 languages (by, say, # of living fluent speakers globally)? Top 30?

I'm genuinely curious. And also trying to discern whether your point is that many-- but not necessarily _all_-- current languages seem to conform to this hypothesis, or that actually very few seem to.

[kleton]

This is known as Universal 20 of Greenberg 1963. Not so universal, but you have to get down to languages way out of the top 30 like Chechen to find one that don't obey the typical rule. Of 576 languages catalogued in Dryer 2018, 113 are English-like, 182 are English-reversed, and the rest somewhat varied.

[codeulike]

Thats fascinating