Universals Archive
A database of proposed crosslinguistic laws and tendencies in grammar across the world’s languages. 2,029 published entries.
1,698 entries · page 16 of 34
| # | Standardized / Original | Domain | Type | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 870 | In initial clusters, IF there is at least one sequence consisting of two voiced obstruents, THEN there is at least one combination consisting of two unvoiced obstruents. | phonology | implication | consonant cluster, initial, voice, obstruent |
| 871 | In final clusters, IF there is at least one sequence consisting of two voiced obstruents, THEN there is at least one combination consisting of two unvoiced obstruents. | phonology | implication | consonant cluster, final, voice, obstruent |
| 872 | In initial clusters, IF there is at least one sequence consisting of voiced obstruent + nasal, THEN there is at least one sequence consisting of unvoiced obstruent + nasal. | phonology | implication | consonant cluster, initial, voice, obstruent, nasal |
| 873 | In initial clusters, IF there is at least one sequence consisting of voiced obstruent + semivowel, THEN there is at least one sequence consisting of unvoiced obstruent + semivowel. | phonology | implication | consonant cluster, initial, voice, obstruent, semivowel |
| 874 | In final clusters, IF there is at least one sequence consisting of sonant + voiced obstruent, THEN there is at least one sequence consisting of sonant +unvoiced obstruent. | phonology | implication | consonant cluster, final, voice, obstruent, sonant |
| 876 | IF there is at least one cluster containing n glottalized consonants, THEN there will be at least one cluster with n-1 glottalized consonants. | phonology | implication | consonant cluster, final, initial, glottalized |
| 877 | In initial clusters, IF there is at least one cluster consisting of nasal + liquid, THEN there is at least one cluster consisting of obstruent + liquid. | phonology | implication | consonant cluster, initial, nasal, liquid, obstruent |
| 878 | In final clusters, IF there is at least one cluster consisting of nasal + nasal, THEN there is at least one cluster consisting of nasal + obstruent. | phonology | implication | consonant cluster, initial, nasal, obstruent |
| 879 | In initial clusters, IF there is at least one cluster consisting of obstruent + nasal, THEN there is at least one cluster consisting of obstruent + liquid. | phonology | implication | consonant cluster, initial, nasal, obstruent, liquid |
| 880 | IF there are final consonant clusters, THEN there will be at least one cluster with a final obstruent in the dental-alveolar region. | phonology | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | consonant cluster, final, dental, alveolar, obstruent |
| 881 | IF there are initial consonant clusters, THEN there is at least one cluster with an initial consonant in the dental-alveolar region. | phonology | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | consonant cluster, initial, dental, alveolar |
| 882 | IF there are affricates, THEN there is at least one in the dental-alveolar of alveo-palatal region. | phonology | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | consonant cluster, initial, dental, alveolar, alveo-palatal |
| 883 | IF there is a high back unrounded vowel, THEN there will be a [corresponding?] high front unrounded vowel. | phonology | implication | high, back, front, vowel, unrounded |
| 884 | IF there is a lower high back rounded vowel, THEN there will be a high or lower high front vowel. | phonology | implication | high, lower high, back, front, vowel, rounded |
| 885 | IF maximal back vowel height is X, THEN maximal front vowel height will be at least as high. | phonology | implication | vowel, back, front, high |
| 887 | IF there is a front rounded vowel, THEN there will be a front unrounded vowel at the same tongue height. | phonology | implication | rounded, unrounded, front, vowel, height |
| 888 | IF there is a rounded front vowel, THEN there is a rounded back vowel. | phonology | implication | rounded, front, back, vowel, height |
| 889 | IF there is a back unrounded vowel, THEN there is a front unrounded vowel of corresponding tongue height. | phonology | implication | unrounded, front, back, vowel, height |
| 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 |
| 891 | IF basic order is OV, THEN there is mora-counting. IF basic order is VO, THEN there is syllable-counting. |
phonology, syntax | implication | order, VO, OV, rhythm, mora-counting, syllable-counting |
| 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 |
| 895 | See Graphics for Moderate rhythmic holism | inflection, prosodic phonology | mutual implication | syllable structure, stress, vowel harmony, vowel system |
| 896 | IF there is head-marking, THEN adjectives tend to be similar to verbs. | inflection, syntax | implication | head-marking, adjective, verb |
| 897 | IF there is dependent-marking, THEN adjectives tend to be similar to nouns. | inflection, syntax | implication | dependent-marking, adjective, noun |
| 898 | Provided there is actancy variation in terms of tense, accusative constructions will always be found in the future/present/imperfective while ergative constructions occur in the perfect/past/perfective tenses. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | alignment, ergative-absolutive, nominative-accusative, tense, present, past, future, perfect, perfective, imperfective |
| 899 | There is an affinity between aspect and object individuation, insofar as the imperfective (progressive, frequentative, etc.) aspect often goes hand in hand with an indefinite, partitive or non-referential object. | inflection, syntax | mutual implication | aspect, imperfect, object, indefinite, partitive, non-referential, incorporation |
| 900 | Whenever there is an opposition between a subjective and an objective conjugation, the former will be used with non-individuated or non-thematic objects, and the latter with individuated or thematic objects. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | conjugation, objective, subjective, object |
| 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 |
| 902 | Whenever indirect constructions are in opposition with direct constructions, the former will be found with progressive aspect and partially involved objects and the latter with non-progressive aspect and totally involved objects. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | indirect construction, aspect, progressive, object |
| 903 | The antipassive is correlative with the imperfective aspect and low-level object individuation. Whenever antipassive constructions are in opposition with active constructions, the former will be found with the imperfective aspect and low-level object individuation and the latter with perfective aspect and highly individuated objects. |
inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | antipassive, imperfective, aspect, object |
| 904 | The more firmly individuated (definite, human, etc.) the agent and the object and/or the more complete (semantically pregnant, perfective, real. etc.) the process, the greater the chances the sentence will adopt the more grammatically transitive construction. See Graphics |
inflection, syntax | implication | definiteness, animacy, perfective, affectedness, transitivity |
| 905 | IF tone is omnisyllabic, THEN morphemes are monosyllabic. | phonology | implication | tone, morpheme, syllable |
| 906 | IF tone is omnisyllabic, THEN there will be a repertoire of purely emotional/affective particles. | phonology, lexicon | implication | tone, particle |
| 907 | IF noun phrases take case marking when occurring in core relations governed by verbs and other lexical expressions, THEN they will also do so when in construction with adpositions in syntactically more peripheral relations. | inflection, syntax | implication | case, adposition |
| 909 | IF case is marked by means of segmental modification, THEN case will also be marked by means of affixation. | inflection | implication | case, affix |
| 910 | IF adpositions encode the syntactic core relations of subject, object, and perhaps attribute, THEN no grammatical relations are encoded by morphological case. | inflection, syntax | implication | case, adposition |
| 911 | IF Location (adverb) is encoded by the verbal strategy, THEN all intransitive main predicates will be encoded by that strategy. IF Class Membership (noun) is encoded by the verbal strategy, THEN Property (adjective) will be encoded by that strategy. |
inflection, syntax | implicational hierarchy | verbalization, hierarchy, verb, adjective, noun, adverb |
| 912 | In a language with only a single genitive, when a transitive clause is nominalized, the subject’s prior claim to the genitive case is absolute. | syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | nominalization, genitive, case, subject |
| 913 | IF there are speech act constructions in certain subordinate clauses, THEN there are speech act constructions in main clauses. | inflection, syntax | implication | speech act construction, clause, main, subordinate |
| 914 | IF there is no direct object, THEN the embedded subject appears as direct object. IF there is direct object, but no indirect object, THEN the embedded subject appears as indirect object. IF there are both direct and indirect objects, THEN the embedded subject appears as one of the oblique cases (i.e. neither subject nor direct object nor indirect object) |
inflection, syntax | implicational hierarchy | causative, hierarchy, subject, direct object, indirect object, oblique object |
| 915 | IF verbs agree with inanimate NPs, THEN they also agree with animate NPs of the same grammatical relation, or even of a grammatical relation lower on the relational hierarchy which otherwise determines agreement preferences. | inflection, syntax | implication | agreement, animacy, grammatical relations |
| 916 | IF a plurality split occurs, THEN all NPs to the left from it will have the distinction of plurality and those to the right from it will lack it. | inflection | implicational hierarchy | hierarchy, animacy, split, number, plural |
| 917 | Whenever there is a plurality split in lexical nouns, the split in the 3rd person pronoun (if there is one) will be at the same place or lower down in the animacy hierarchy. | inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | animacy hierarchy, split, number, plural, person pronoun, 3, noun |
| 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 |
| 920 | IF OV is a basic order, THEN there will be left-branching. IF VO is a basic order, THEN there will be right-branching. |
syntax | implication | order, VO, OV, left-branching, right-branching |
| 921 | IF there is the voiceless labial fricative phoneme /f/, THEN there will be the voiced labial fricative phoneme /w-v/. | phonology | implication | labial, fricative |
| 922 | IF there is the voiced velar fricative phoneme /©/, THEN there will be the voiceless velar fricative phoneme /x/. | phonology | implication | velar, fricative, voice |