A discussion of the sources of certain language universals argues that adjective/noun constructions pattern similarly to genitive/noun and relative-noun constructions because they are typical diachronic sources for adjectivals, and that relatives and genitives have the same diachronic source and thus the same set of synchronic behavior. It is also argued that the process by which relative clauses and genitives are produced can result in preposed relative clauses only in verb-final languages. Examples are drawn from a number of Nilo-Saharan, Semitic, Chadic, Cushitic, Niger-Congo, Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, Australian, Indo-European languages, from two isolates, and from one (Hua) difficult-to-classify language. The paper presents an extensive examination of the Agaw language group. (Author/MSE)