Universals Archive
A database of proposed crosslinguistic laws and tendencies in grammar across the world’s languages. 2,029 published entries.
157 entries · page 2 of 4
| # | Standardized / Original | Domain | Type | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 675 | see Graphics | morphology, syntax, prosodic phonology | mutual implication | order, noun, adjective, attributive, verb, object, topic, comment, preposition, postposition dependent-marking, analytic, synthetic morphosyntax, word accent, compound accent, phrase accent, syllable, length, vocalism, timing, sterss, vowel inventory, noun class, gender, article |
| 685 | IF negation is morphological, THEN a. portmanteau realization of Neg; b. prosodic unity of Neg and verb (viz. if they "share" one word stress); c. placement of Neg close to the root of the verb (i.e. between the root and other inflectional morphemes); d. morphophonemic alternation in the Negation morpheme. |
morphology, prosodic phonology | implication | negation, prosodic phrasing, stress, portmanteau, morpheme, order, alternation |
| 691 | IF bound morphology is exclusively or predominantly prefixing, THEN symmetrical reduplicative compounds (provided such complex forms exist) will be overwhelmingly alliterative rather than rhyming or ablauting. | morphology, syntax | implication | compounds, affix, prefix, alliteration, rhyme, rhythm, iambic |
| 711 | IF morphology is agglutinative, THEN (stress) accent will be demarcating, falling on word edges (either on initial or final syllables), rather than be free and centralizing, and there consequently will not be much phonological reduction of initial or final syllables. |
phonology, morphology | implication | agglutination, accent, reduction |
| 713 | IF morphology is agglutinative, THEN there is vowel harmony. IF morphology is flexive, THEN there is stress accent. |
prosodic phonology, morphology | implication | agglutination, flexion, vowel harmony, stress accent |
| 816 | Sibilants of different types tend not to cluster, or only across morpheme boundaries. | phonology, morphology | unconditional | consonant cluster, final, sibilant, morpheme boundary |
| 818 | IF moras matter [for what?], THEN the language is non-monosyllabic and tonal. | phonology, morphology | implication | mora, monosyllabic, tone |
| 890 | IF morphology is agglutinative, THEN accent is primarily pitch. IF morphology is flexive, THEN the accent is primarily stress. |
prosodic phonology, morphology | implication | agglutination, flexion, accent, pitch, stress |
| 892 | IF the word order is OV, THEN there are suffixes. IF the word order is VO, THEN there are prefixes. |
morphology, syntax | implication | VO, OV, order, suffix, prefix |
| 893 | See Graphics for Iambic vs. Troachaic phrase accent and its many correlates | prosodic phonology, morphology, syntax | mutual implication | phrase accent, word canon, timing, mora, syllable, consonantism, vocalism, tone, verse, music, order, object, verb, adverb, auxiliary, adjective, noun, attributive, postposition, clitic, enclitic proclitic, affix-order, suffix, prefix, synthesis, analysis, agglutination, polysynthesis, flexion, isolation |
| 894 | see Graphics for Iambic vs. Trochaic languages | prosodic phonology, morphology, syntax | mutual implication | stress, syllable, unit, order, object, verb, subject, adverb, adjective, noun, attributive, agglutination, flexion, timing, stress, syllable, syllable structure, intonation contour, tone |
| 901 | Incorporation of an object generally goes hand in hand with its non-referentiality and the aspectual nuance of habitual action or activity, one of the senses of the imperfective. | morphology, syntax | mutual implication | coalescence, incorporation, non-referentiality, aspect |
| 908 | Allomorphy cannot be conditioned across (grammatical) word boundaries. | morphology | unconditional | allomorphy |
| 918 | IF incorporation of externally modifiable NP, THEN incorporation of backgrounded NP. IF incorporation of backgrounded NP, THEN incorporation of demoted NP. IF incorporation of demoted NP, THEN incorporation of nonreferential noun. |
morphology, syntax | implicational hierarchy | incorporation, noun |
| 919 | The more numerous the contrastive segments, the shorter the average length of a word. | phonology, morphology | mutual implication | word length, phoneme inventory |
| 925 | IF a syllabic consonant occurs in the phonological context X in root morphemes, THEN it occurs also in other morphemes, given that they contain the context X. | phonology, morphology | implication | consonant, syllabic, root, morpheme |
| 949 | The more a language is fusional, the more phonological rules are needed to serve morphological fusion. | phonology, morphology | implication | fusion |
| 973 | When there are analogical changes in their inflectional paradigms, the number of synonymous morphemes (stems and affixes) is more likely to diminish than to increase. | morphology | unconditional | stem, affix, allomorphy, inflection class, synonymy, analogical change |
| 974 | When there are analogical changes in their inflectional paradigms, long morphemes (stems and affixes) or words are more likely to replace short or non-existent morphemes (stems and affixes) or words than the other way round. | morphology | unconditional | stem, affix, morpheme, word, length, analogical change |
| 975 | When there are analogical changes in their inflectional paradigms, short morphemes (stems and affixes) or words more likely cause a re-formation of long morphemes (stems and affixes) or words than the other way round. | morphology | unconditional | stem, affix, morpheme, word, length, analogical change |
| 976 | When there are analogical changes in their inflectional paradigms, the forms (stems and affixes) of singular are more likely to be replaced than forms of other numbers. |
morphology | unconditional | stem, affix, number, singular, non-singular, analogical change |
| 977 | When there are analogical changes in their inflectional paradigms, the forms (stems and affixes) of 3rd person are more likely to be replaced than forms of other persons. |
morphology | unconditional | stem, affix, person, 3, analogical change |
| 978 | When there are analogical changes in their inflectional paradigms, the forms (stems and affixes) of indicative forms are more likely to be replaced than the forms of other moods. | morphology | unconditional | stem, affix, indicative, non-indicative, mood, analogical change |
| 979 | When there are analogical changes in their inflectional paradigms, the forms (stems and affixes) of local cases of place names are more likely to be replaced than forms of local cases of common nouns. |
morphology | unconditional | case, local case, place names, common noun, analogical change |
| 980 | When there are analogical changes in their inflectional paradigms, the forms of non-local cases of common nouns are more likely to be replaced than stems and affixes of non-local cases of place names. | morphology | unconditional | case, local case, place names, common nouns, analogical change |
| 981 | When there are analogical changes in their inflectional paradigms, the stems and affixes of common nouns are more likely to be replaced than stems and affixes of proper/personal names. |
morphology | unconditional | common nouns, proper names, personal names, common nouns, analogical change |
| 1006 | If a metathesis is synchronically regular, THEN it is not phonologically conditioned. | phonology, morphology | implication | metathesis |
| 1018 | When there are analogical changes in their inflectional paradigms, the forms (stems and affixes) of inferior numerals are more likely to replace the forms (stems and affixes) of superior numerals than the other way round. | morphology | implication | stem, affix, numeral, analogical change |
| 1019 | When there are analogical changes in their inflectional paradigms, the forms (stems and affixes) of cardinal numerals are more likely to replace the forms (stems and affixes) of ordinal numerals than the other way round. | morphology | implication | stem, affix, numeral, ordinal, cardinal, analogical change |
| 1020 | When there are analogical changes in their inflectional paradigms, the forms (stems and affixes) of the present are more likely to replace the forms of the other tenses than the other way round. | morphology | implication | stem, affix, tense, present, non-present, analogical change |
| 1036 | Morphemically simple phonological words never have more than one main stress. | phonology, morphology | unconditional | stress, accent |
| 1043 | Root accent is systematically favoured over inflectional accent. | phonology, morphology | unconditional | root, affix, accent |
| 1100 | (holistic) Type A vs. Type B |
phonology, morphology, syntax | mutual implication | nasal vowel, syllable, order, attributive, adjective, noun, prefix, suffix, preposition, postposition, serial verb, number, compounding, consonant, agreement, subject |
| 1105 | IF alignment is ergative for (some) syntactic purposes, THEN it will be ergative for (some) morphological purposes. |
morphology, syntax | implication | alignment, ergative |
| 1117 | IF there is no syntactic wh-movement, THEN there is special marking in yes-no questions, and vice versa. | syntax, morphology | mutual implication | interrogative, question particle, wh-movement |
| 1126 | IF predicates can incorporate their arguments (i.e., verbs their subjects and objects), THEN head nouns can incorporate their attributive clauses. | morphology, syntax | implication | incorporation, subject, object, verb, attribute |
| 1127 | IF nouns for alienable possession can incorporate their possessive pronouns, THEN nouns for inalienable possession can too. | morphology, syntax | implication | incorporation, possessive pronoun, noun, possession, alienable, inalienable |
| 1128 | IF nominal subjects can be incorporated into verbs, THEN nominal non-subjects can also be incorporated. | morphology, syntax | implication | incorporation, subject, verb, noun |
| 1129 | IF pronominal objects can be incorporated, THEN possessor pronouns can also be incorporated; IF possessor pronouns can be incorporated, THEN pronominal subjects can also be incorporated. |
morphology, syntax | implication | incorporation, object, subject, possessive, pronoun |
| 1130 | IF nouns can be incorporated, THEN pronouns can also be incorporated. | morphology, syntax | implication | incorporation, pronoun, noun |
| 1131 | When nouns and pronouns can be incorporated, they have a special incorporated form (uninflected in the case of nouns) as distinct from their absolute form. |
morphology, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | incorporation, pronoun, noun |
| 1201 | IF a language is (more or less) analytic, THEN it has a (more or less) regular phraseological system. | morphology, lexicon | implication | phraseology, analytic |
| 1202 | IF morphological categories are marked on verbs rather than nouns, THEN they specify aspects of events and states rather than of persons and objects, and they are derivational rather than inflectional. |
morphology | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | gender, number, case, aspect, Aktionsart |
| 1212 | Regardless of relational alignment, IF nouns in instrumental and/or locational relations can be incorporated into the verb, THEN nouns for patients of transitive and intransitive verbs can also be incorporated; IF patients of intransitive verbs can be incorporated, THEN patients of transitive verbs can also be incorporated. |
morphology, syntax | implication | incorporation, patient, location, instrument |
| 1213 | IF indirect objects can be incorporated, THEN non-agental subjects and direct objects can also be incorporated; IF non-agental subjects can be incorporated, THEN direct objects can also be incorporated. |
morphology, syntax | implication | incorporation, indirect object, direct object, non-agental subject |
| 1214 | Verbs with incorporated object nouns are intransitive for all morphological and syntactic purposes (such as case marking of subjects and verb agreement with objects). |
morphology, syntax | unconditional | verb, transitivity, noun incorporation, case, verb agreement, direct object |
| 1323 | IF a reflexive can take long-distance antecedents, THEN it is monomorphemic. IF a reflexive cannot take long-distance antecedents, THEN it is polymorphemic. |
morphology, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | binding, reflexive, long-distance reflexive |
| 1330 | In every human language, redundancy, measured in phonological terms, hovers near 50%. | phonology, morphology, syntax | unconditional | redundancy |
| 1342 | The more marked the position in which a word appears, the stronger the tendency for this word to present a marked morphology. Therefore a marked position (centrifugal, VO, where V is the center and O the periphery) tends to be reflected by a marked morphology (flexional rather than agglutinative). That is: IF morphology is flexional rather than agglutinative, THEN basic order tends to be VO rather than OV. IF morphology is agglutinative rather than flexional, THEN basic order tends to be OV rather than VO. |
morphology, syntax | implication | markedness, order, VO, OV, flexion, agglutination |
| 1491 | Noun incorporation, per movement in syntax (as opposed to lexical compound formation), is possible for underlying objects only. | morphology, syntax | unconditional | incorporation, noun, object, patient |