Universals Archive
A database of proposed crosslinguistic laws and tendencies in grammar across the world’s languages. 2,029 published entries.
253 entries · page 5 of 6
| # | Standardized / Original | Domain | Type | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1805 | IF obstruents occur syllable- and word-finally, THEN they occur syllable- and word-initially. IF sononrants occur syllable- and word-initially, THEN they occur syllable- and word-finally. |
phonology | implication | obstruent, sonorant, syllable, word, initial, final, phonotactics |
| 1806 | In word-final nasal + obstruent clusters, IF the nasal is deleted, THEN the obstruent should have already been deleted as well. |
phonology | implication | obstruent, nasal, deletion |
| 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 |
| 1874 | Core items of the baby talk register tend to persist for long periods of time. | lexicon | unconditional | baby talk |
| 1895 | IF anything grammatical is borrowed, THEN there is a borrowed lexical item from the same source language. | all-encompassing | implication | language contact, borrowing |
| 1896 | IF there are borrowed bound morphemes, such as clitics, affixes and parts of compound stems, THEN there are borrowed free forms which these bound morphemes are proper parts of. IF there are borrowed phonetic segments or features, THEN there are borrowed accentuated lexemes which these segments or features are proper parts of. |
morphology | implication | language contact, borrowing, accent, affix, clitic |
| 1897 | IF there is a borrowed non-noun, THEN there is a borrowed noun. | lexicon | implication | language contact, borrowing, word class |
| 1898 | A lexical item whose meaning is verbal can never be included in the set of borrowed properties. | lexicon | unconditional | language contact, borrowing, word class, verb |
| 1899 | IF there ais a borrowed inflectional affix, THEN there is a borrowed derivational affix. | morphology | implication | language contact, borrowing, affix |
| 1900 | When function words are borrowed (especially adpositions and conjunctions), their ordering relative to their co-constituents will be the same as in the donor language. |
syntax | unconditional | language contact, borrowing, order, adposition, conjunction |
| 1901 | When at least some words of a particular word class are uninflected, words of that some word class that are borrowed must include ones which are equally uninflected. |
inflection | unconditional | language contact, borrowing |
| 1905 | A pronominal form used for showing greater respect or social distance is never eliminated from the system of reference in favour of one for showing less respect or social distance. | inflection, syntax, discourse | unconditional | pronoun, personal pronoun, social distance, respect, honorific |
| 1934 | IF there is a word-form borrowing of a negative determiner, THEN there is a word-form borrowing of a specific determiner, too. | lexicon, morphology | implication | borrowing, indefinite pronoun, negative determiner, specific determiner |
| 1935 | IF there is a word-form borrowing of a free-choice indefinite, THEN there is a word-form borrowing of other than free-choice indefinite of the same ontological category, too. | lexicon, morphology | implication | borrowing, indefinite pronoun, free-choice indefinite |
| 1936 | IF there is a word-form borrowing of a personal indefinite, THEN there is a word-form borrowing of an impersonal indefinite of the same indefiniteness function, too. | lexicon, morphology | implication | borrowing, indefinite pronoun, personal indefinte, impersonal indefinite |
| 1937 | IF there is a word-form borrowing of a local indefinite, THEN there is a word-form borrowing of a temporal indefinite of the same indefiniteness function, too. | lexicon, morphology | implication | borrowing, indefinite pronoun, local indefinite, temporal indefinite |
| 1938 | IF there is a word-form borrowing of other than negative indefinite (excluding determiners), THEN it is likely that there will be a word-form borrowing of a negative indefinite of the same ontological category, too. | lexicon, morphology | implication | borrowing, indefinite pronoun, negative indefinite |
| 1939 | IF there is a word-form borrowing of an impersonal indefinite, THEN it is likely that there will be a word-form borrowing of a temporal indefinite of the same indefiniteness function, too. | lexicon, morphology | implication | borrowing, indefinite pronoun, impersonal indefinite, temporal indefinite |
| 1940 | IF there is a word-form borrowing of a local indefinite, THEN it is likely that there will be a word-form borrowing of an impersonal indefinite of the same indefiniteness function, too. | lexicon, morphology | implication | borrowing, indefinite pronoun, impersonal indefinite, local indefinite |
| 1941 | IF there is a word-form borrowing of a local interrogative, THEN there is a word-form borrowing of a temporal interrogative, too. | lexicon, morphology | implication | borrowing, local interrogative, temporal interrogative |
| 1942 | Indefinite word forms which synchronically contain an indefiniteness marker that already exists in the potential recipient language are more likely to be borrowed (and to be kept after they had been borrowed) than forms of the same function that do not contain such a marker. | lexicon, morphology | unconditional | borrowing, indefinite pronoun |
| 1943 | IF there is a word-form borrowing of a personal indefinite in a language, THEN there is a word-form borrowing of an temporal indefinite of the same indefiniteness function, too. | lexicon, morphology | implication | borrowing, pronoun, definiteness |
| 1949 | IF indicators of any persons combine to form new pronouns, THEN the combination of 1st and 2nd person singular also occurs. | morphology | implication | pronoun, personal pronoun, 1st person, 2nd person |
| 1950 | When three-degree systems of demonstratives where proximal/medial/distal correspond to 1st/2nd/3rd person develop into two-degree systems, the opposition will be proximal&medial vs. distal or proximal vs. medial&distal, corresponding to 1st&2nd vs. 3rd person or 1st vs. 2nd&3rd person. There will never be a two-degree demonstrative system with a correspondence to a person system where the opposition is 1st/3rd vs. 2nd person. | lexicon | unconditional | demonstrative, proximal, medial, distal, person, 1, 2, 3 |
| 1952 | There can be no spread of plural marking to personal pronouns unless there is such plural marking on demonstrative pronouns; there can be no spread of plural marking to demonstrative pronouns unless there is such plural marking on (at least personal) nouns; there can be no spread of plural marking to 1st person personal pronouns unless there is such plural marking on 2nd person personal pronouns; there can be no spread of plural marking to inanimate nouns unless there is such plural marking on personal nouns. |
inflection | implication | plural, noun, animacy, demonstrative, personal pronoun, 1st person, 2nd person |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 1975 | There is a tendency for the existential, copulative, and verb-category carrying dummy elements of a language (a) synchronically to interpenetrate in complex patterns of suppletion, semantic overlapping, and partial homonymy, and (b) diachronically to merge, split, and otherwise restructure among themselves. | inflection, syntax, semantics | unconditional | verb, existence, copula, auxiliary, suppletion, homonymy |
| 1976 | There are severe limitations on the kinds of synchronic patterns and diachronic restructurings which may occur in existential-copulative-auxiliary systems, and such patterns and changes are related to syntactic characteristics of a very general typological nature. In other words, a particular pattern of constructions of 'being' tends to reflect the general syntactic character of the language, and changes in the pattern tend to form part of general typological shifts. | inflection, syntax, semantics | implication | verb, existence, copula, auxiliary |
| 1977 | Tenseless or present-tense copulative expressions connecting nouns are more likely to vary diachronically between zero and overt morphemic marking than other copulative expressions or existential or auxiliary expressions. On the one hand, the N1 is N2 construction is the most likely place for optional omission and eventual full deletion, and, on the other hand, when the language has a zero copula, this same construction is the most likely place for the appearance of a new copulative marker. | inflection, syntax, semantics | implication | |
| 1981 | When a language with a full copula begins to lose it, or when a language with a zero copula begins to develop one, the use in which the change is initiated is that of identity or equivalence with a noun complement. | syntax | implication | copula, zero |
| 1982 | When a language with zero copula inserts a pro-copula it does so between the subject and complement regardless of the normal position of verbs in the language. | syntax | unconditional | copula, zero, order, verb |
| 1983 | In a language with optional omission of a copula (under the conditions of <a class="innerLink" href="browse.php?entry_id=1981"><img src="../img/entry.gif" border="0">), there is a tendency for the optional copula to appear between the subject and complement regardless of its position in constructions where it may not be omitted. | syntax | unconditional | copula, zero, order |
| 1993 | In an SOV language with the lexical items for existential and copulative function separate, the Ex tends to be used as an auxiliary combining with the conjunctive to form 'present state' tenses of perfect or present continuous value; as such it tends to change from an independent following auxiliary to a tense-forming suffix. | inflection, syntax | unconditional | order, SOV, verb, existence, copula, auxiliary, conjunctive, tense, aspect, present, perfect, continuous, suffix |
| 1994 | The lexical meaning of adjectives is historically more stable than that of nouns, since it is simpler (simple property concepts vs. names for property bundles). On the other hand, adjectives become more easily obsolete than nouns and their diachronic turnover is faster than that of nouns, since when there is not much meaning in the first place its bleaching is tantamount to loss. Adjectives are more easily borrowed than nouns, since their meanings are simpler and easier to grasp. |
lexicon | implication | word class, adjective, noun, borrowing |
| 1995 | When gender distinctions are being neutralized in pronominal or other relevant paradigms by way of morphological replacement, non-human or neuter forms win out, replacing human/non-neuter forms, rather than vice versa. | inflection | unconditional | gender, neuter, animacy, markedness, neutralization |
| 1997 | It is more natural for a two-term gender distinction in the plural, human vs. non-human, to come about, through semantic reanalysis, from the two-term distinction human male vs. other than the other way round. | inflection, syntax, semantics | target < source | gender, animacy, human, masculine, feminine |
| 1998 | IF there are gender-number-person contrasts on the predicate agreeing in these categories with the subject, THEN there are the same contrasts on subject pronouns. | inflection, syntax | implication | agreement, verb, gender, number, person, pronoun |
| 1999 | IF a bound form is morphologically replaced through analogical levelling or otherwise, THEN the corresponding free form is also replaced, or has already been replaced. | inflection, syntax | implication | free form, bound form, analogy, levelling |