Universals Archive
A database of proposed crosslinguistic laws and tendencies in grammar across the world’s languages. 2,029 published entries.
2,017 entries · page 12 of 41
| # | Standardized / Original | Domain | Type | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 554 | IF there is free variation in Noun Quantifier order depending on the identity of the numeral, THEN one of the two orders is used with a continuous series of numbers beginning with ‘one’, or ‘one’ and the bases of the system are used with one of the orders. IF there is free variation in Noun Quantifier order with a particular numeral ‘x’, THEN the next higher is also in free variation or is in the opposite order to that of ‘x’ with the noun. |
syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | numeral, order, noun, quantitative |
| 555 | IF there are both partitive and adjectival Quantifier Noun constructions, THEN the smallest number which employs the partitive is larger than the largest number which has the adjectival construction. | syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | numeral |
| 556 | The construction with the interrogative 'how many?' is usually the same as that with the highest block of numerals. | syntax | unconditional | numeral |
| 557 | When there is an overt marker distinguishing absolute and contextual numbers, THEN this marker is added to the contextual form yielding the absolute form, and not vice versa. | word formation, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | numeral |
| 558 | Where there are contrasting forms for the absolute and contextual uses of cardinal numbers, there is always neutralization for some numerals, in which case the contextual form appears. | word formation, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | cardinal numeral |
| 559 | When languages with and without articles are in contact, it is more common for languages without an article to innovate one than for languages with an article to abandon it. | syntax | unconditional | article, borrowing |
| 560 | IF there is a separate absolute form for a particular numerical value, THEN there is a separate absolute form for the next lower value as well. | inflection | implication | cardinal numeral |
| 561 | Where there is a distinction between absolute and contextual cardinal numerals, IF the contextual form is used as a multiplier with a lower base, THEN the contextual form is also used with all higher bases. |
word formation | implication | cardinal numeral |
| 562 | IF an atomic numeral expression is borrowed from one language into another, THEN all higher atomic expressions are borrowed. | lexicon | implication | numeral, borrowing |
| 563 | IF the dual extends to non-pronominal agreement forms, THEN it also extends to personal pronouns and nouns. | inflection, syntax | implication | agreement, number, dual, noun, personal pronoun |
| 564 | IF there is a dual with nouns other than those denoting natural pairs, THEN there will be one with natural-pair nouns as well. | inflection | implication | number, dual, noun, pair |
| 565 | IF there is a duo-paucal, THEN there is a contrast between a general paucal and a multal. | inflection | implication | number, dual, paucal |
| 566 | IF the dual extends to nouns, THEN it also extends to pronouns. | inflection | implication | number, dual, noun, pronoun |
| 567 | IF 3rd person differentiates a dual, THEN so does 2nd. IF 2nd person differentiates a dual, THEN so does 3rd. |
inflection | mutual implication | pronoun, personal pronoun, number, dual, 3rd person, 2nd person |
| 568 | IF 2nd and 3rd person differentiate a dual, THEN so does (with more than chance frequency) 1st (but not vice versa). | inflection | implication | pronoun, personal pronoun, number, dual, 3rd person, 2nd person, 1st person |
| 570 | When there are high and low social varieties of a language and only one of them has an article, it will usually be the low variety. | syntax | unconditional | article |
| 571 | IF present and past tenses have completely identical stems, THEN there are other means of distinguishing these two tenses. | inflection | implication | persent tense, past tense |
| 572 | (In Indo-European) IF there is no nominal case marking, THEN there will be an article. | inflection, syntax | implication | case, article |
| 573 | IF the definite article is grammaticalized in subject NPs, THEN it is also grammaticalized in direct object NPs. IF the definite article is grammaticalized in direct object NPs, THEN it is also grammaticalized in prepositionally marked NPs. |
inflection, syntax | implicational hierarchy | article, grammaticalization, PP, direct object NP, subject NP |
| 574 | Hierarchy of syntactic bondedness (stronger > weaker): article+noun > deictic+noun < interrogative+noun < quantifier/indefinite+noun < adjective+noun > > participle+noun > relative clause+noun. As soon as an adjunct category has an obligatory overt marker of its subordination to the head noun (such as ligature morphemes), all weaker bound categories of adjuncts also require an overt marker. But bondedness hierarchy is claimed to be valid for other morphosyntactic differences between various kinds of adjuncts as well. |
syntax | implicational hierarchy | article, noun, interrogative, deictic, quantifier, indefinite, adjective, participle, relative clause, boundeness, hierarchy, ligative |
| 575 | IF there is obligatory marking of (in)definiteness, THEN there will be obligatory marking of nominal plurality (but not vice versa). | inflection, syntax | implication | definiteness, number, plural, noun |
| 576 | IF there is obligatory marking of (in)definiteness, THEN there will be no obligatory marking of numeral classification. | inflection, syntax | implication | definiteness, numeral classifier |
| 577 | IF there is obligatory marking of (in)definiteness, THEN there will be no stacked adnominal numeral constructions. | inflection, syntax | implication | definiteness, numeral |
| 578 | IF a dual and a plural are distinguished in the 1st person exclusive form of a pronoun, THEN they are also distinguished in the inclusive. | inflection | implication | number, dual, plural, pronoun, inclusive, exclusive |
| 579 | IF personal pronouns can have semantic rather than syntactic agreement in gender or number with a particular noun, THEN relative pronouns, predicative, and attributive constituents can also have semantic agreement with that noun. IF relative pronouns can have semantic agreement in gender or number with a particular noun, THEN predicative, and attributive constituents can also have semantic agreement with that noun. IF predicative constituents can have semantic agreement in gender or number with a particular noun, THEN attributive constituents can also have semantic agreement with that noun. |
inflection, syntax, semantics | implicational hierarchy | agreement, gender, number, attributive, predicate, relative pronoun, personal pronoun |
| 580 | IF any inflectional category is expressed through suppletion in nouns, THEN it is also expressed suppletively in pronouns or verbs. | inflection | implication | suppletion, noun, verb, pronoun |
| 581 | IF stacked targets (such as attributive adjective and a determiner) may differ in agreeing on a referential-semantic or a syntactic basis, THEN the target further from the controller is likelier than the one closer to it to agree on a semantic basis. | inflection, syntax, semantics | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | agreement, attribution, adjective, determiner |
| 582 | IF there is a distinction between count and mass nouns, THEN NPs are configurational. IF NPs are configurational, THEN there is a distinction between count and mass nouns. |
morphology, syntax, semantics | mutual implication | count noun, mass noun, configurational NP |
| 583 | When there are gender distinctions in the singular, IF there is a gender distinction in 1st and/or 2nd person non-singular, THEN there is the same gender distinction in the singular involving either the corresponding person(s) or 3rd person. | inflection | implication | gender, number, singular, person, 1, 2, 3, pronoun |
| 584 | When there are no gender distinctions in the singular, IF there is a gender distinction in 1st person, THEN there is the same gender distinction in 2nd person for any one non-singular number, and IF there is a gender distinction in 2nd person, THEN there is the same gender distinction in 3rd person. | inflection | implication | gender, number, singular, non-singular, person, 1, 2, 3 |
| 585 | IF there is any inflection in nouns, THEN there are also some inflections in pronouns. | inflection | implication | inflection, noun, pronoun |
| 586 | IF morphemes are semantically less complex than others, THEN they will not systematically be more complex in phonetic form than these. | phonology, morphology | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | morpheme, complexity, semantics, iconicity |
| 587 | Where phonetic complexity is systematically correlated with semantic complexity, the former will be measured in terms of segments rather than features; therefore, semantically more complex morphemes may be longer than semantically simpler ones but they will not systematically contain more complex sound types. | phonology, semantics | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | morpheme, complexity |
| 588 | IF the volume of sound is increased, THEN so will be the emphasis. | phonology | mutual implication | emphasis |
| 589 | IF morphology is agglutinative, THEN there is no grammatical gender. | inflection | implication | agglutination, gender |
| 590 | IF there is grammatical gender, THEN morphology is flexive. | inflection | implication | flexion, gender |
| 591 | Whenever in a language there are two classes of noun phrases such that members of one class are case-marked ergatively and members of the other class are case-marked accusatively, and there is a semantic difference between the classes related either to activeness of noun phrase referents, or their quantitative properties, or their pragmatic prominence, members of the class that ranks higher on these properties will be marked accusatively and members of the lower-ranking class, ergatively. | inflection, syntax, semantics | implicational hierarchy | case, accusative, ergative, NP, hierarchy, split |
| 592 | All languages include utterance pairs where inclusion relations between semantic representations are paralleled by corresponding inclusion relations in morpheme structure; but in no language are all meaning inclusion relations so paralleled (e. g. no language has a fully iconic numeral system where all numerals are expressed by the repetition of the morpheme ‘one’). | morphology, syntax, semantics | unconditional | morpheme, complexity, iconicity, numeral |
| 593 | All languages include some utterances where the grouping of some semantic features in syntactic surface structure is identical to their grouping in semantic representations; but in no language are such groupings always congruent on the two levels. | syntax, semantics | unconditional | order |
| 594 | The repetition of syntactic constituents is used in all languages to express continuity of action (e.g. 'he walked and walked') and/or emphasis (e. g. 'very, very bright'). | morphology, syntax, semantics | unconditional | repetition, emphasis, iterative |
| 595 | There are some instances of adjacency relations among syntactic constituents which symbolize semantic relatedness between the corresponding meanings; but in all languages there are some utterances with semantically related but non-adjacent constituents. Cf. Behaghel's First Law. | syntax, semantics | unconditional | order |
| 596 | There are some utterances where simultaneity of morphemes symbolizes semantic relatedness. (Cf. the placement of meaning-bearing suprasegmental features). | morphology, semantics | unconditional | morpheme, suprasegmental |
| 597 | IF the temporal order of syntactic constituents that describe events symbolizes anything about the actual order in which these events are said to take place, THEN the symbolism is iconic in that the earlier-mentioned event is to be taken as the one that takes place earlier. | syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | order, iconicity |
| 598 | The reversal of syntactic constituent order is never systematically iconic, i. e. signaling the reversal of meaning. | syntax | unconditional | order, iconicity |
| 599 | IF a possessive adjective is separated from the head noun by any constituent, THEN this intervening element will be the determiner. | syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | possessive adjective, noun, determiner, order |
| 600 | When evaluative and affective adjectives occur in the same construction, the evaluative adjective always precedes the affective adjective. | syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | adjective, order |
| 601 | IF basic order is VO, THEN the chances are equal that there is person-number inflection or that there isn't. | inflection, syntax | implication | order, VO, verb, inflection, person, number |
| 602 | IF the sentence describing the caused event is intransitive, THEN the range of noun phrases that occur in this construction will include intransitive subjects. IF the sentence describing the caused event is transitive, THEN the range of noun phrase that occur in this construction will include objects. |
inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | causative verb, NP, accusative case, intransitive subject, transitive object |
| 603 | Whenever there is more than one alignment type of verb agreement, one being ergative and the other non-ergative: ergative verb agreement occurs in perfective sentences, and non-ergative verb agreement occurs in imperfective sentences. |
inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | agreement, alignment, ergative, aspect, perfective |
| 604 | IF there is agreement between the verb and some of its noun phrase complements with respect to “affectedness” or quality, THEN the noun phrase complements participating in this kind of agreement will be objects and intransitive subjects. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | agreement, verb, NP, semantics, affectedness, object, intransitive subject |