Universals Archive
A database of proposed crosslinguistic laws and tendencies in grammar across the world’s languages. 2,029 published entries.
297 entries · page 6 of 6
| # | Standardized / Original | Domain | Type | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1873 | The most striking – and apparently universal – variability is in what can be called "degree of babyishness". Changes in the degree of babyishness may reflect the age of the addressee, thenature of the situation, the speaker’s estimate of the linguistics abilities of the child, the strength of the affetive bound between the interactants, and so on. | discourse | unconditional | baby talk |
| 1874 | Core items of the baby talk register tend to persist for long periods of time. | lexicon | unconditional | baby talk |
| 1875 | Like other registers, baby talk or selected features of it may be extended to secondary uses, e.g. (i) to suggest the speech of children, (ii) in talking to pets, (iii) in coaxing other people or even objects to behave the way the speaker wants, (iv) in calling arttention to someone's childishnesss, (v) in adult intimate interaction such as talk between lovers. | discourse | unconditional | baby talk |
| 1877 | Pronouns for 1st person inclusive plural may consist of 1st person plus 2nd person [singular] forms, but pronouns for 1st person inclusive dual may not. |
inflection | unconditional | inclusive, person, 1, 2, number, dual, plural |
| 1879 | In the coding of subordination vis-a-vis that of non-subordinate clauses: (a) Case/adposition & agreement eliminated >> case/adposition marking & agreement maintained. (b) Arguments omitted & tense/aspect/mood eliminated >> arguments omitted & tense/aspect/mood maintained. (c) Arguments maintained & tense/aspect/mood eliminated >> arguments omitted & agreement maintained. (d) Arguments maintained & agreement maintained >> arguments omitted & agreement maintained. (where ‘>>’ means ‘is crosslinguistically more frequent than’) |
syntax, inflection | unconditional | clause combining, subordination, tense, aspect, mood, agreement, case, adposition |
| 1882 | Polarity [in gender/number systems] is never complete (i.e., polarity is never the sole configuration of gender/number markers under all circumstances in a given language). | inflection, syntax | unconditional | gender, number, polarity |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 1928 | When more than one modifier occurs before the noun, the order is always Dem < Num < Adj. | syntax | unconditional | order, noun, modifier, demonstrative, numeral, adjective |
| 1929 | If a language has two near-synonymous constructions which differ structurally in linguistic distance, they will differ semantically in (among other things) conceptual distance in a parallel fashion. | morphology, syntax, semantics | unconditional | linguistic distance, conceptual distance |
| 1930 | If a language has two modifier constructions that differ in linear order and in linguistic distance, the construction with a prenominal modifier will display the shorter linguistic distance. | morphology, syntax | unconditional | order, noun, modifier, linguistic distance |
| 1931 | If a language has two modifier constructions that differ in linear order and in linguistic distance, the construction with a prenominal modifier will display the closer conceptual distance. | morphology, syntax | unconditional | order, noun, modifier, conceptual distance |
| 1932 | Diminutives tend to contain high front vowels, whereas augmentatives tend to contain high back vowels. | phonology, semantics | unconditional | diminutive, augmentative, vowel, high, front, back, iconicity |
| 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 |
| 1944 | When there are suppletive stems for a verb 'to give' determined by the person of the recipient, the opposition will always be 1st vs. 2nd&3rd person or 1st&2nd vs. 3rd person, never 1st&3rd vs. 2nd person. | inflection | unconditional | suppletion, verb, recipient, person, 1, 2, 3 |
| 1948 | 2nd person plurals never appear to make a distinction between a plurality of addressees and combinations of one or more addressees with non-ego, non-addressees, i.e., 3rd persons. | inflection | unconditional | pronoun, personal pronoun, number, non-singular, 2nd person, inclusive, exclusive |
| 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 |
| 1951 | In deixis, person and related spatial, 1st and 3rd person never align as against 2nd. 2nd person may align with 1st or 3rd or both. | inflection, syntax | unconditional | deixis, spatial, person, 1, 2, 3 |
| 1967 | Within words (or also relevant other domains, such as stems), co-occurring vowels tend to be similar with respect to place and manner of articulation and laryngeal specification, while co-occurring consonants (adjacent as well as distant) tend to be dissimilar. | prosodic phonology | unconditional | phonotactics, vowel, consonant, word, assimilation, dissimilation |
| 1968 | Within lexical morphemes of the shape C1VC2V, the sonority of C1 tends to be less than that of C2, with C1 tending to be an obstruent and C2 a sonorant. | phonology | unconditional | phonotactics, sonority, word |
| 1972 | Every language has at least one set of forms or constructions whose primary function (or one of several major functions) is to denote existence, generally with respect to location in space or time, but in the limiting case existence apart from specific location. In other words, every language has an existential element such as a verb or particle, and the denotation of existence is never merely a marginal function of something else. | syntax, semantics | unconditional | verb, particle, existence |
| 1973 | Every language has at least one set of forms or constructions whose primary function (or one of several major functions) is to denote copulative relationships (e.g., identity, equivalence, class membership, class inclusion, attribution of property). In other words, every language has at least one copula or copula constructions, even if this is a zero of some kind which clearly contrasts with other elements commutable with it. | syntax, semantics | unconditional | verb, copula, zero |
| 1974 | In a given language the grammatical categories of the verb (e.g., person, voice, mood, tense, negation) may be carried to a greater or lesser extent by auxiliary verbs or particles which co-occur with the verb. In an extreme case these categories may be carried by a dummy morph which has no apparent lexical meaning at all. | inflection, syntax | unconditional | verb, inflection, auxiliary |
| 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 |
| 1980 | Existential verbs of indefinite subjects tend toward clause-initial position. | syntax, semantics | unconditional | verb, existence, definiteness, subject, order |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 2000 | All grammars leak. | phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, etc. | unconditional | analogy, iconicity, economy, plumbing |
| 2001 | Some semantic criteria never define a gender completely. For example, there is never a gender exclusively for the names of languages. | inflection | unconditional | gender |
| 2002 | Gender cannot be assigned on the basis of syntactic properties of nouns (such as, e.g., that of taking prepositional complements). | inflection, syntax | unconditional | gender, gender assignment |
| 2003 | When gender is assigned according to morphological properties of nouns (such as declension class, or other inflectional or derivational categories) or to phonological properties of nouns, this is always secondary, being limited to residues of semantic assignment or being overruled by semantic assignment rules. | phonology, morphology | unconditional | gender, gender assignment, declension |
| 2010 | In agreement with conjoined NPs and person resolution is required, when the conjuncts include a 1st person, 1st person agreement forms will be used; otherwise, when the conjuncts include a 2nd person, 2nd person agreement forms will be used; otherwise, 3rd person agreement forms (the default) are used. | inflection, syntax | unconditional | agreement, coordination, resolution rules, person, person hierarchy, 1, 2, 3 |
| 2012 | When vowel length is contrastive, pitch is the most important cue, intensity the second-most important cue, and duration the least important cue for word stress.When vowel length is not contrastive, duration is the most important cue for word stress.When there is contrastive tone, duration is the most important cue for word stress and pitch the least important. | prosodic phonology | unconditional | stress, pitch, vowel length, intensity, duration, tone |
| 2020 | There are no (clear cases of) long-distance reciprocals. | syntax | unconditional | reciprocal, binding |
| 2021 | There is a word for FEELING (verb, adjective, or noun), undifferentiated between "bodily feelings" (sensations) and "cognitively based" feelings ("emotions"), and distinct from THINKING. | lexicon | unconditional | sensation, emotion, cognition, word class |
| 2022 | Some feelings can be described as "good" and some as "bad" (while some may be viewed as neither "good" nor "bad"). | lexicon | unconditional | sensation, emotion |
| 2023 | There are words comparable, though not necessarily identical in meaning, with cry/weep and smile/laugh; that is words referring to bodily expression of good and bad feelings. | lexicon | unconditional | emotion, sensation, body |
| 2024 | There are "emotive" interjections (i.e. interjections expressing cognitively based feelings). | syntax, lexicon | unconditional | emotion, sensation, cognition, interjection |
| 2025 | There are some "emotion terms" (i.e. terms designating some cognitively based feelings). | lexicon | unconditional | emotion, sensation, cognition |
| 2026 | There are words linking feelings with (i) the thought that "something bad can happen to me", (ii) the thought that "I want to do something", and (iii) the thought that "people think something bad about me", that is words overlapping (though not identical) in meaning with the English words afraid, angry, and ashamed. | lexicon | unconditional | emotion, sensation |
| 2027 | (i) Cognitively based feelings can be described via observable bodily "symptoms" (that is, via some bodily events regarded as characteristic of these feelings). (ii) In all languages, cognitively based feelings can be described with reference to bodily sensations, general or localized. (iii) In all languages, cognitively based feelings can be described via figurative "bodily images" (referring to imaginary events and processes taking place inside the body). |
semantics | unconditional | emotion, sensation, cognition, body, metaphor |
| 2028 | There are alternative grammatical constructions for describing (and interpreting) cognitively based feelings, conceptualizing "emotions" as "involuntary" or as "uncontrollable", or as "overwhelming" and "irresistible", or as "active" and in some sense "voluntary", and so on. | syntax, semantics | unconditional | cognition, sensation, emotion, synonymy |
| 2029 | The main universal mode for describing cognitively based feelings is in terms of a comparison, that is, via LIKE, and in this, the main human strategy for talking about feelings is analogous to the main human strategy for talking about colours. | lexicon | unconditional | emotion, sensation, cognition, colour, metaphor |