Universals Archive
A database of proposed crosslinguistic laws and tendencies in grammar across the world’s languages. 2,029 published entries.
297 entries · page 2 of 6
| # | Standardized / Original | Domain | Type | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 514 | There is no language in which the plural does not have some non-zero allomorphs, whereas there are languages in which the singular is expressed only by zero. The dual and the trial are almost never expressed only by zero. | inflection | unconditional | number, singular, plural, dual, trial, allomorphy, zero<br> |
| 517 | All languages have pronominal categories involving at least three persons and two numbers. | inflection | unconditional | pronoun, number, person |
| 522 | It is possible but not necessary for the adnominal and pronominal demonstratives stems to be fully or partially identical. | morphology, syntax | unconditional | demonstrative |
| 524 | In more than one language, but not in all, the demonstrative and the definite article co-occur. | syntax | unconditional | demonstrative, definite article |
| 525 | In more than one language, and possibly in all, preposed demonstratives are peripheral to tautolateral numerals and adjectives; postposed demonstratives are most frequently so. | syntax | unconditional | order, demonstrative, numeral, adjective, noun |
| 527 | Every language has a numeral system of finite scope. | lexicon | unconditional | numeral |
| 528 | Every number n (0<n<L) can be expressed as part of the numeral system in any language. | lexicon | unconditional | numeral |
| 529 | Zero is never expressed as part of the numeral system. | lexicon | unconditional | numeral |
| 530 | In every numerical system some numbers are expressed by basic terms. | lexicon | unconditional | numeral |
| 531 | No number is ever expressed in any numeral system by means of a function any of whose arguments is ≥ L. | lexicon | unconditional | numeral |
| 534 | It seems probable that in all languages expressions of time and place may appear in the initial positions in the sentence. | syntax | unconditional | order |
| 541 | A link for addition is never initial in a numeral. | word formation | unconditional | numeral |
| 552 | In indefinite and approximative constructions, the numeral tends to follow the noun. | syntax | unconditional | numeral, order, indefinite, approximative |
| 556 | The construction with the interrogative 'how many?' is usually the same as that with the highest block of numerals. | syntax | unconditional | 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 598 | The reversal of syntactic constituent order is never systematically iconic, i. e. signaling the reversal of meaning. | syntax | unconditional | order, iconicity |
| 612 | Reference clauses for Switch-Reference marking are never subordinate to Marking clauses. | inflection, syntax | unconditional | switch-reference |
| 617 | When becoming a nasal or determining the place of articulation of adjacent nasals by assimilation, labial velars behave primarily like velars. | phonology | unconditional | labial, velar, nasal |
| 624 | Distributive-key quantifier words are at least as closely bound to their head nouns as their ordinary counterparts. | syntax, semantics | unconditional | quantifier, distributive, head noun, boundedness |
| 625 | Distributive-key quantifier words and their ordinary counterparts are not morphologically related. |
morphology | unconditional | quantifier, distributive |
| 631 | Distributive-share quantifier words are formed from their ordinary counterparts by morphological process. | morphology | unconditional | quantifier, distributive |
| 643 | Variation of more than one pronominal category may occur in the same language in reference showing different degrees of respect. | inflection, semantics | unconditional | personal pronoun, respect, social distance |
| 645 | In languages in which variation of person in pronominal reference is used to show degrees of respect or social distance, the 3rd person indicates greater social distance when used in reference to either the addressee or the speaker than do the pronouns of the 2nd and 1st person, respectively. | inflection, semantics | unconditional | personal pronoun, 3 person, 2 person, 1 person, respect, social distance, addressee, speaker |
| 649 | Variation of gender so as to employ one which does not correspond to the notional category of the sex of the referent is not used for showing greater respect than reference with the usual gender. | inflection, semantics | unconditional | personal pronoun, gender, noun, honorific |
| 660 | There is no reduplication pattern where the constituent to be reduplicated may be freely chosen from among the included subconstituents. | morphology | unconditional | reduplication |
| 661 | There is no reduplication pattern where the number of repetitions is freely chosen from the set of all numbers. | morphology | unconditional | reduplication |
| 662 | There is no reduplication pattern which would not involve reference to lexical identity. | morphology | unconditional | reduplication |
| 663 | There is no reduplication pattern that would involve reference to phonological properties other than syllable number, consonantality-vowelhood, and absolute linear position. | phonology, morphology | unconditional | reduplication |
| 684 | The main principles for the position of negatives: (a) they tend not to be separated from the verb by the subject or the object, (b) they tend not to interrupt the verb+object unit (Negative-Plus-VO Principle), and (c) they tend to precede the verb (Negative-Before-Verb-Principle). |
syntax | unconditional | negation, order |
| 688 | All languages have the place distinctions of high and low and of front and back in their vowel systems; hence vowel systems minimally include /i, a, u/. | phonology | unconditional | vowel, high, low, front, back |
| 690 | CV (Consonant + Vowel) is the only universal model of the syllable. There are languages lacking syllables with initial vowels and/or syllables with final consonants, but there are no languages devoid of syllables with initial consonants or syllables with final vowels. | phonology | unconditional | syllable, initial, final, consonant, vowel |
| 695 | When nasal consonants assimilate to a following consonant, then they assimilate in place of articulation (rather than in manner). | phonology | unconditional | assimilation, consonant, nasal, place of articulation |
| 696 | The two intonation shapes that are found everywhere are fall and rise, with their targets, low and high. The meanings are as uniform as the shapes: falls for ‘being through’, rises for ‘not being through’. Spreading from each is a net of metaphor. ‘Not being through’ is akin to ‘being aroused’, and since we are most aroused by what is most important, a high pitch becomes the normal sign of importance. | phonology, semantics | unconditional | intonation |
| 704 | The base number tends to be put before the unit, and in general a higher number before a lower, when they are conjoined. | word formation | unconditional | numeral |
| 708 | There is a tendency for high and low short vowels to be more central than the corresponding long vowels. | phonology | unconditional | vowel, high, low, short, central, long |
| 712 | Marked tones tend to be high rather than low. | phonology | unconditional | tone, markedness |
| 717 | There will be no more than five phonological tone levels (underlyingly). | phonology | unconditional | tone |
| 719 | More frequently, when tone is privative, high tone is marked relative to low tone, rather than the other way round. | phonology | unconditional | tone, level tone, high, low, markedness |
| 720 | Among CENTRAL and EXTREME tones, CENTRAL are usually unmarked and EXTREME marked. | phonology | unconditional | tone, central, extreme, markedness |
| 728 | Laterals [liquids] tend to occur in the neighborhood of consonants whereas nonlaterals tend to occur in the neighborhood of vowels. | phonology | unconditional | liquid, lateral, consonant, vowel |
| 756 | A contrast between five basic vowel qualities is the norm for a human language, and in general the most common systems are those with close to this number of basic vowels. | phonology | unconditional | vowel |
| 758 | Preferences regarding point of articulation for glottalic obstruents are as follows: injectives tend to have front articulation, ejectives back articulation. | phonology | unconditional | injective, ejective, glottalic, obstruent |
| 759 | There are at most four injective obstruents. | phonology | unconditional | consonant, obstruent, injective |
| 761 | The injective corresponding to a noninjective dental is often retracted to the alveolar or alveopalatal position and is consistently apical, often with accompanying retroflexion. | phonology | unconditional | consonant, injective, noninjective, dental, alveolar, alveopalatal, apical, retroflexion |