Universals Archive
A database of proposed crosslinguistic laws and tendencies in grammar across the world’s languages. 2,029 published entries.
543 entries · page 11 of 11
| # | Standardized / Original | Domain | Type | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1853 | IF there is a laryngealized voiced alveolar stop, THEN there is also a laryngealized voiced bilabial stop. | phonology | implication | stop, alveolar, bilabial, laryngealized, voice |
| 1854 | IF there is laryngealized a voiced palatal approximant, THEN there is also the voiceless glottal fricative. | phonology | implication | approximant, fricative, palatal, glottal, laryngealized, voice |
| 1855 | Vowels tend to be lower preceding non-laterals (trills or flaps) than preceding other consonants. |
phonology | implication | consonant, liquid, nonlateral, trill, flap, vowel, phonotactics |
| 1856 | Vowels tend to be lower in the environment of a velarized lateral than in other environments. |
phonology | implication | consonant, liquid, lateral, velarization, vowel, phonotactics |
| 1857 | When a vowel is adjacent to a nonlateral, it will be centralized or backed. | phonology | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | liquid, nonlateral, centralization, back, vowel |
| 1858 | When a vowel is adjacent to a lateral, it will be fronted. | phonology | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | liquid, lateral, front, vowel |
| 1859 | Languages tend to have laterals after grave consonants and nonlaterals after acute. | phonology | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | liquid, lateral, acute, grave, consonant, vowel |
| 1860 | Consonantality of a neighboring sound has the effect of changing a nonlateral into a lateral whereas nonconsonantality has the reverse effect of changing a lateral into a nonlateral. | phonology | unconditional | liquid, lateral, consonantality, consonant |
| 1861 | The consonantality of a neighboring sound has the effect of changing a nontrill (flap or tap) into a trill whereas a neighboring nonconsonantal sound has the reverse effect of changing a trill into a nontrill. | phonology | unconditional | liquid, trill, tap, flap, consonantality, consonant |
| 1862 | A trill is found to occur in a stressed position, to denote emphasis, or in slow speech. As against this, a flap (or tap) occurs in unstressed position, and in non-emphatic or fast speech. | phonology | unconditional | liquid, trill, tap, flap, stress, consonant |
| 1863 | A retroflexed flap (out-flap) and also other retroflexed consonants have a retroflexing or centralizing influence on a preceding rather than following segment. | phonology | unconditional | liquid, flap, retroflexion, centralization, consonant |
| 1864 | The alveolar and retroflex stops generally tend to become taps and flaps intervocalically. | phonology | unconditional | liquid, stop, tap, flap, retroflex |
| 1865 | The liquids tend to become devoiced in the final and also in initial position. They further become spirantized especially in initial position. | phonology | unconditional | liquid, devoicing, spirantization |
| 1866 | IF nasalization and nasal deletion occur in the context of high vowels, THEN it will have already occurred in the context of mid vowels. IF nasalization and nasal deletion occur in the context of mid vowels, THEN it will have already occurred in the context of low vowels. |
phonology | implicational hierarchy | nasalization, nasal deletion, vowel, low, high, mid |
| 1867 | IF there is a acute/grave opposition of compact nasal consonants, THEN there is an identical opposition of compact oral stops. | phonology | implication | consonant, nasal, oral, compact, acute, grave |
| 1869 | There is a "tone of voice" appropriate for talking to young children: (i) overall higher pitch and/or exaggerated intonation contours; (ii) slower speech tempo. |
phonology, pragmatics | unconditional | baby talk, pitch, intonation, tempo |
| 1871 | Every speech community seems to have a small lexicon of words used primarily with young children. The words of this special lexicon (i) fall into certain semantic areas (namely body parts, body functions, kin terms, food, animals, infant games), (ii) they include greater use of hypocoristic affixes, (iii) they are used more freely in different word class functions than the normal adult lexicon (esp. as parts of compound verbs with general purpose auxiliaries), and (iv) they tend to be phonologically simplified (simple canonical forms, esp. CVCV; substitution of marked sounds by less marked ones; special sounds; consonant and vowel harmony; reduplication). | phonology, syntax | unconditional | baby talk, hypocoristic, word class, complexity, markedness, consonant harmony, vowel harmony, reduplication |
| 1893 | IF there is an opposition of voice vs. voiceless and aspirate vs. non-aspirate, THEN there is a phoneme /h/. | phonology | implication | aspirate, voice, /h/ |
| 1894 | IF there is an opposition of dental and retroflex consonants, THEN there is an opposition of pharyngealized and non-pharyngealized dentals. | phonology | implication | pharyngeal, dental, retroflex |
| 1906 | IF there are prenasalized voiceless consonants only, THEN voicing is non-contrastive within the consonant system. OR: IF voicing is contrastive in the consonant system, THEN some prenasalized voiced stops will be present. |
phonology | implication | voice, prenasalized stop |
| 1932 | Diminutives tend to contain high front vowels, whereas augmentatives tend to contain high back vowels. | phonology, semantics | unconditional | diminutive, augmentative, vowel, high, front, back, iconicity |
| 1956 | IF there is partial or complete denasalization of nasal consonants, THEN there is a contrast of oral and nasal vowels. | phonology | implication | vowel, nasal, oral, denasalization |
| 1959 | IF there is tone, THEN vowel systems are (have stayed) relatively rich; IF there is stress accent, THEN vowel systems are (have become) impoverished. |
phonology | implication | tone, stress accent, vowel systems |
| 1960 | IF a speech community is a politically dominant, warrior people, THEN there will be stress accent; IF a speech community is a politically subordinate, peaceful people, THEN there will be tone. |
phonology, culture/mind | implication | stress accent, tone |
| 1961 | IF there is tone rather than stress accent, THEN there are no/few consonant clusters and no closed syllables other than ones closed by a nasal; IF there is stress accent rather than tone, THEN there will be consonant clusters and closed syllables, and much word-internal assimilation and dissimilation among consonants and other consonantal processes (such as articulatory strengthening in stressed syllables). |
phonology | implication | tone, stress accent, syllable structure, consonant cluster, assimilation, dissimilation |
| 1963 | IF there are consonant clusters CiCj, THEN there are also stems of the form CiVCj. | phonology, morphology | implication | phonotactics, consonant cluster |
| 1964 | IF the basic word form is stem+suffix, THEN word stress, provided it is fixed, is on a non-final syllable. IF the basic word form coincides with the stem (i.e., is without suffix), THEN word stress, provided it is fixed, is on final syllable. |
phonology, morphology | implication | word stress, suffix |
| 1965 | IF a phonotactic constraint holds for a syllable-edge, THEN it also holds for a corresponding word edge, but not vice versa. | phonology, morphology | implication | word, syllable, phonotactic constraint |
| 1966 | IF a sequence of consonants (possibly only consisting of one) occurs in a consonant cluster of n members, THEN it also occurs in a corresponding cluster of n-1 members. | phonology | implication | consonant cluster, phonotactics |
| 1967 | Within words (or also relevant other domains, such as stems), co-occurring vowels tend to be similar with respect to place and manner of articulation and laryngeal specification, while co-occurring consonants (adjacent as well as distant) tend to be dissimilar. | prosodic phonology | unconditional | phonotactics, vowel, consonant, word, assimilation, dissimilation |
| 1968 | Within lexical morphemes of the shape C1VC2V, the sonority of C1 tends to be less than that of C2, with C1 tending to be an obstruent and C2 a sonorant. | phonology | unconditional | phonotactics, sonority, word |
| 1969 | For both stems and consonant clusters, IF less sonorant consonant combinations are permissible, THEN the corresponding more sonorant consonant combinations are also permissible: CVC > CVS > CV CC > CS > C |
phonology | implicational hierarchy | phonotactics, sonority, stem, consonant cluster |
| 1970 | IF clusters of n Cs are possible syllable-initially, THEN clusters of n-1 Cs are also possible syllable-initially, and IF clusters of n Cs are possible syllable-finally, THEN clusters of n-1 Cs are also possible syllable-finally. | phonology | implication | phonotactics, syllable, consonant cluster, complexity |
| 1971 | The Compensatory Principle: The co-occurrence patterns of hetero-organic consonants across a vowel are such that if the first consonant is more sonorous than the second according to laryngeal specification, then the second consonant will be more sonorous according to place of articulation; if the first consonant is more sonorous than the second according to place of articulation, then the second will be more sonorous according to laryngeal specification. |
phonology | implication | phonotactics, consonant, sonority |
| 2000 | All grammars leak. | phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, etc. | unconditional | analogy, iconicity, economy, plumbing |
| 2003 | When gender is assigned according to morphological properties of nouns (such as declension class, or other inflectional or derivational categories) or to phonological properties of nouns, this is always secondary, being limited to residues of semantic assignment or being overruled by semantic assignment rules. | phonology, morphology | unconditional | gender, gender assignment, declension |
| 2012 | When vowel length is contrastive, pitch is the most important cue, intensity the second-most important cue, and duration the least important cue for word stress.When vowel length is not contrastive, duration is the most important cue for word stress.When there is contrastive tone, duration is the most important cue for word stress and pitch the least important. | prosodic phonology | unconditional | stress, pitch, vowel length, intensity, duration, tone |
| 2013 | If there is contrastive pitch accent, then there is a vocalic length contrast.If there is a vocalic length contrast, then there cannot also be contrastive dynamic (=stress) accent.If there is contrastive dynamic (=stress) accent, then there cannot also be contrastive vowel length.[i.e., and vice versa] | prosodic phonology | implication | pitch, stress, vowel length |
| 2031 | IF there are word-initial geminates, THEN there are also medial geminates. | phonology | implication | consonant, geminate, word |
| 2032 | IF there are voiced word-initial geminate stops, THEN there are also voiceless word-initial geminate stops. | phonology | implication | consonant, geminate, voice |
| 2033 | IF there are contour tones in place X on any of the hierarchies in (a)-(d), THEN there are contour tones also lower on each hierarchy:(a) syllable type: CVV >> CVR >> (CVO) >> CV(b) number of syllables: monosyllabic >> bisyllabic >> polysyllabic(c) prominence: stressed >> unstressed, root >> affix syllable(d) tone: R >> F >> H, L | phonology | implicational hierarchy | tone, contour tone |
| 2034 | Generally agreed upon "facts" about contour tones (marked = more complex, rarer): (a) contour tones are more marked than level tones; (b) rising tones are more marked than falling tones; (c) rising-falling and falling-rising tones are more marked than rising and falling tones. Markedness generalizations:The more marked a tone is, (i) the more likely it is absent in a tone system;(ii) the more likely it is to be restricted to a hospitable tone bearing unit (e.g. long, prominent, sonorous). |
phonology | implication | tone, contour tone, level tone, markedness |
| 2035 | IF there is only one liquid, THEN there are no onset clusters. | Phonology | Liquids, onset clusters |