Universals Archive
A database of proposed crosslinguistic laws and tendencies in grammar across the world’s languages. 2,029 published entries.
297 entries · page 4 of 6
| # | Standardized / Original | Domain | Type | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1098 | Nasal consonants tend to share place of articulation properties with stop systems, and glottal features, syllabicity, and accent bearing with liquids. | phonology | unconditional | nasal, consonant, stop, liquid |
| 1104 | Regardless of alignment, the ‘antecedent’, i. e. the controller, of a reflexive is A (or S, where it is extended to intransitive). | syntax | unconditional | reflexive, subject, agent, controller |
| 1106 | All human languages classify actions into two basic types: those involving one obligatory participant, which are described by intransitive clauses, and those involving two or more obligatory participants, which are dealt with by transitive clauses. | syntax | unconditional | intransitive clause, transitive, participant |
| 1107 | Whenever there is an alignment split between bound and free pronouns, bound (i.e. agreement) forms are more likely to align accusatively, while case marking on free forms is more likely to align ergatively. | inflection, syntax | unconditional | agreement, alignment, split, case, ergative, accusative |
| 1109 | The absolute or nominative form of a noun will be used in citation. | inflection, syntax | unconditional | nominative case, absolutive case, semantics |
| 1120 | All personal pronouns are definite. | inflection, syntax | unconditional | definite, personal pronoun |
| 1163 | Indefinite articles are generally short; that is, they never have more than two syllables. | phonology, syntax | unconditional | indefinite article |
| 1168 | Vocative nouns (or NPs) take no article or only the definite article, never the indefinite article. | inflection, syntax | unconditional | vocative, definite article |
| 1191 | In all cultures/languages, there is a hierarchy of terms referring to the animal and plant kingdoms (and perhaps other domains of folk taxonomies) with at least a superordinate (life form), a basic (generic), and a subordinate (specific) level. The basic level terms have the highest salience (e.g. are the ones used most frequently, are shortest and morphologically least complex). |
lexicon | unconditional | (biological) folk taxonomy |
| 1203 | Every natural language has syntactic constituents (called noun-phrases) whose semantic function is to express generalized quantifiers over the domain of discourse. |
syntax, semantics | unconditional | quantification, generalized quantifier, NP |
| 1205 | Determiner universal: Every natural language contains basic expressions (called determiners) whose semantic function is to assign to common count noun denotations (i.e., sets) A a quantifier that lives on A. |
syntax, semantics | unconditional | quantification, determiner, quantifier, count noun |
| 1207 | Monotonicity constraint: The simple NPs of any natural language express monotone quantifiers or conjunctions of monotone quantifiers. |
syntax, semantics | unconditional | quantification, monotonicity, NP |
| 1209 | Persistent determiner constraint: Every persistent determiner of human language is monotone ¡ncreasing and weak. |
syntax, semantics | unconditional | quantification, monotonicity, persistence, determiner |
| 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 |
| 1216 | IF an affix expresses a local case, THEN it will preferably be a suffix and never an infix. | inflection | unconditional | case, local, affix, infix, prefix |
| 1246 | The likelihood of initial clusters is greater for languages with final consonants than for languages without final consonants, even greater for languages with final clusters. The likelihood for final clustering is greater for languages with initial clusters than for languages without. |
phonology | unconditional | consonant cluster |
| 1248 | The loss of intervocalic consonants is a more frequently occurring process than loss of initial consonants; hiatus producing more intervocalic loss is less frequent but probably still more frequent than initial loss. | phonology | unconditional | consonant, hiatus |
| 1249 | The complete elimination of a language’s initial vowels, whether by loss or by consonant problems, is less likely than the complete elimination of a language’s sequences of syllable nuclei. | phonology | unconditional | syllable structure, consonant, vowel |
| 1290 | The Animated First Principle (AFP): In simple transitive clauses, the NP which is most animate will precede NPs which are less animate. |
syntax | unconditional | order, noun, animacy, transitive clause |
| 1291 | The Verb-Object Bonding Principle (VOB): The object of a transitive verb is more tightly bounded to the verb than is its subject. |
syntax | unconditional | order, boundedness, subject, object, transitive verb |
| 1316 | In numeral systems, every minuend is a base of the system or a multiple of the base. | word formation | unconditional | numeral |
| 1324 | Among the deictic elements of every human language is one that denotes the speaker and one that denotes the addressee. | lexicon | unconditional | deictic elements, personal pronoun, speaker, addressee |
| 1325 | Every human language has proper names. | lexicon | unconditional | proper name |
| 1326 | No human language has a grammatically homogeneous vocabulary. | lexicon | unconditional | vocabulary |
| 1327 | A major form-class distinction reminiscent of “noun” vs. “verb” is universal, though not always at the same size-level. | lexicon | unconditional | word class, noun, verb |
| 1328 | Every human language has a common clause type with bipartite structure in which the constituents can reasonably be termed “topic” and “comment”. | syntax | unconditional | clause, topic, comment |
| 1329 | Every human language has a distinction between one-referent and two-referent predicators. | lexicon, syntax | unconditional | predicate |
| 1330 | In every human language, redundancy, measured in phonological terms, hovers near 50%. | phonology, morphology, syntax | unconditional | redundancy |
| 1331 | Every human language makes use of distinction of vowel color. | phonology | unconditional | vowel |
| 1332 | A historical tendency toward phonological symmetry is universal. | phonology | unconditional | phoneme inventory |
| 1333 | There are gaps, asymmetries, or “configurational pressures” in every phonological system, no matter when examined. | phonology | unconditional | phoneme inventory |
| 1334 | Every phonological system contrasts phonemes that are typically stops with phonemes that are never stops. | phonology | unconditional | stop, phoneme inventory |
| 1335 | No phonological system has fewer than two contrasting positions of articulation for stops. | phonology | unconditional | stop |
| 1337 | If we define a ‘vowel system’ to include all the segmental phonemes that occur as syllable peaks, then every language has a vowel system. = Every language has segmental phonemes that occur as syllable peaks. |
phonology | unconditional | phoneme, syllable |
| 1356 | In numeral systems, a serialized augend is always larger than its addends. | word formation | unconditional | numeral |
| 1358 | In numeral systems, the maximum number of sporadic addends is two. | word formation | unconditional | numeral |
| 1359 | In numeral systems, all adverbially or partitively expressed multiplicands are serialized multiplicands. | word formation | unconditional | numeral, adverb, partitive |
| 1360 | All the bases of numeral systems are divisible by the fundamental base. | word formation | unconditional | numeral |
| 1361 | In numeral systems, a multiplicand in a pseudo-base is always smaller than its multiplier. | word formation | unconditional | numeral |
| 1363 | In numeral systems, the maximum number of sporadic factors is two. | word formation | unconditional | numeral |
| 1364 | In numeral systems, only a base is ever multiplied by 1. | word formation | unconditional | numeral |
| 1369 | All numeral series have the same mathematical structure. | word formation | unconditional | numeral |
| 1370 | There is a universal principle that in numeral classifier languages a classifier concatenates with a quantifier, locative, demonstrative, or predicate to form a nexus that cannot be interrupted by the noun which is classified. |
syntax | unconditional | classifier, numeral, order |
| 1388 | No language with a traditional auxiliary verb will exist in which the auxiliary does not take what is usually verbal inflection. | inflection, syntax | unconditional | auxiliary, inflection, verb |
| 1390 | The auxiliary always potentially includes tense; that is, in a sentence with tense and an auxiliary, tense will always be part of the auxiliary. | syntax | unconditional | auxiliary, tense |
| 1402 | No language has adverbial predicates which are expressed as argument-internal clitics that are postposed to the constituents that they are bound to. | inflection, syntax | unconditional | adverbial, clitic, order |
| 1403 | All languages have sentences with sentence-initial and non-sentence initial adverbial constituents. For most, if not all, adverbial constructions in all languages , the most "normal", most prosaic, and implicationally most unmarked ordering for such constructions is in a non-sentence-initial position-following either the superficial subject, or the superficial object, or both. |
syntax | unconditional | order, sentence, adverbial |
| 1408 | When there is a general number not specifying any particular number term, it will be expressed, either solely or as the normal case, through the maximally unmarked form, that is, the inflectional root. | inflection | unconditional | number, markedness |
| 1413 | In interjections one or more marginal phonemes occur with a percentage which is characteristic only for principle phonemes. | phonology | unconditional | phoneme, interjection |
| 1416 | All languages have constructions whose primary function is to place new or contrastive topics at the beginning of the sentence. | syntax | unconditional | topic, comment, order |