Universals Archive
A database of proposed crosslinguistic laws and tendencies in grammar across the world’s languages. 2,029 published entries.
225 entries · page 1 of 5
| # | Standardized / Original | Domain | Type | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | IF there is a case which has only zero exponence, THEN it will be that case whose functions include that of encoding the subject of intransitive verbs. | inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | case, zero exponence, subject, intransitive |
| 7 | IF morphemes of both number and case are present and both follow or both precede the noun base, THEN the exponent of number almost always comes between the noun base and the exponent of case. | inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | affix-order, case, number |
| 12 | IF direct objects may control verb agreement (or take case marking) without doing so obligatorily, THEN it will be the more definite and/or the more animate direct objects which are agreed with (or case marked) obligatorily. |
inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | agreement, case, direct object, definite, animate |
| 16 | IF there is Suffixaufnahme, THEN the segmental marker of internal case is closer to the stem of the attributive nominal than is the segmental marker of external case. | inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | case, attribution, agreement, Suffixaufnahme, affix-order |
| 27 | IF there is a ligative in Suffixaufnahme constructions, THEN it is ordered between the internal and external case. | inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | case, agreement, Suffixaufnahme, ligative, affix-order |
| 28 | IF Aufnahme is Präfixaufnahme rather than Suffixaufnahme, THEN there is no ligative between external and internal case. | inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | case, agreement, Suffixaufnahme, Präfixaufnahme, ligative, affix-order |
| 32 | IF there is Suffixaufnahme, THEN there will also be the internal case occurring without the external case. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | case, agreement, Suffixaufnahme <br> |
| 33 | IF there is Suffixaufnahme, THEN there will also be the external case occurring without the internal case. | inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | case, agreement, Suffixaufnahme, internal, external<br> |
| 36 | IF there is Suffixaufnahme, THEN there is also at least one of the following NP-internal case marking patterns: complete marking, free marking (only if Suffixaufnahme is optional), final marking (only if the attributive nominal is the head). | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | case, agreement, Suffixaufnahme, marking |
| 37 | IF Suffixaufnahme is historically preceded by a different construction, THEN one possibility for that construction is to involve a pronoun-like constituent. This constituent may be an indefinite pronoun 'one' which is coreferential with the head and which serves as the immediate head for the attributive nominal; or it may be the definite article of the head. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | case, agreement, Suffixaufnahme, indefinite pronoun, definite article |
| 38 | IF there is Suffixaufnahme both in headed and headless NPs at one time and at some later time there is Suffixaufnahme in only one of the two contexts, THEN that context is headless NPs. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | case, attribution, agreement, Suffixaufnahme, head, ellipsis |
| 39 | IF there is Suffixaufnahme with both preposed and postposed attributives at one time and at some earlier time only one of the two contexts, THEN that context will be postposed attributives. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | case, agreement, Suffixaufnahme, attributive, order |
| 40 | IF there is Suffixaufnahme both in NPs where the attributive and the head are prosodically separated and in NPs where two are prosodically unified, and at some earlier time it had only one of the two contexts, THEN that context is NPs with prosodic separation. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | case, agreement, Suffixaufnahme, prosodic phrasing<br> |
| 41 | IF an attributive nominal has two or more affixes at one time and at an earlier time one of those was not present, THEN it is the outermost one that was missing. | inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | case, agreement, Suffixaufnahme, attributive, affix, order |
| 42 | IF there is Suffixaufnahme at one time and at some later point there is not, THEN one possible successor construction is the possessive adjective. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | case, agreement, Suffixaufnahme, adjective, possessive |
| 58 | IF the general rule is that the descriptive adjective follows the noun, THEN there may be a minority of adjectives which usually precede, but IF the general rule is that descriptive adjectives precede the noun, THEN there are no exceptions. | syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | order, adjective, noun |
| 59 | When any or all of these items — demonstrative, numeral, descriptive adjective — precede the noun, they are always found in that order. If they follow, the order is the same or the opposite. | syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | order, adjective, demonstrative, numeral, noun |
| 63 | IF the adjective follows the noun, THEN the adjective expresses all the inflectional categories of the noun, while the noun itself may lack overt expression of one or all of these categories. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | order, adjective, noun, inflection |
| 83 | When direct objects are marked by accusative, non-direct objects do not gain accusative marking in dative-shifting. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | accusative case, indirect object, dative-shift |
| 89 | IF there are any formal similarities in agreement markers, THEN they are between non-subject agreement markers. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | agreement, verb, direct object, indirect object, subject, adverbial object |
| 119 | IF NP-internal constituents agree in two categories, THEN these will most likely be number and gender or number and person, depending on whether the targets are modifiers/determiners (and the controllers head nouns) or head nouns (and the controllers attributive nouns). The second-most likely combination of two categories with modifier/determiner targets is that of number and case; and the only other permissible combination of two categories is that of gender and case. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | NP, agreement, number, gender, case, person |
| 120 | IF NP-internal constituents agree in more than two categories (the maximum being four), THEN those will always include number and gender and very likely also case. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | NP, agreement, number, gender, case |
| 122 | IF the same verbal meaning is expressible either through a construction where a complement of the verb is in the Accusative or through a construction where the same complement is in an adverbial case and there is a meaning difference between two constructions, THEN this semantic contrast will be either a contrast between a definite and an indefinite object, or a contrast between an object that is fully involved in the event and one that is partially involved, or a contrast between affected and non-affected participant. | inflection, syntax, semantics | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | object, case, accusative, adverbial, definite, indefinite, involvement, affectedness |
| 139 | IF a property is expressed alternatively by a noun and an adjective and there is an associated difference between temporary versus permanent property, THEN it is the noun which will express permanent property and the adjective which will express temporary property. | syntax, semantics | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | word class, noun, adjective, time-stability |
| 140 | IF a property is expressed alternatively by a noun and an adjective and there is also an associated difference between that property associated with other properties in one expression but not in the other, THEN it is the noun which will express the cluster of properties and the adjective the single property. | syntax, semantics | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | word class, noun, adjective, property |
| 170 | IF there are case affixes on nouns, THEN they are almost always suffixed. | inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | case, noun, affix-order, suffix |
| 171 | IF a noun phrase constituent carries case and number inflection when co-occurring with a noun, THEN it can also fill a nominal slot by itself and carry the same inflection. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | NP, case, number, noun, inflection |
| 185 | When there are analogical changes in the inflectional paradigms of place names, non-local cases (including the nominative) are generally reformed after local cases (such as the dative), rather than the other way round. | inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | place name, nominative case, local case, non-local case, analogical change |
| 219 | Provided there are non-root as well as root morphemes, non-root morphemes have a more limited inventory of phonemes than root-morphemes and are on average shorter than root-morphemes. | phonology, morphology | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | morpheme, root, non-root, phoneme inventory, length |
| 222 | IF there is a distributive-key quantifier word, THEN that word is a distributive-key universal quantifier. |
lexicon | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | quantifier, distributive |
| 225 | IF alignment is active, THEN there is no case inflection. IF alignment is ergative, THEN there are ergative, absolutive, (and locative) cases. IF alignment is accusative, THEN there are nominative, accusative, (genitive, dative, instrumental, and locative) cases. |
inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | alignment, active, ergative, accusative, case, locative, nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental |
| 270 | When nouns are distinguished as animate/personal and inanimate/impersonal and there is some (non-accidental) syncretism of this opposition, animate/personal forms will win out. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | animacy, noun, syncretism |
| 279 | IF one of the forms of the imperative coincides with a pure (non-inflected, zero-marked) root, THEN its meanings include that of 2nd person singular. | inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | verb, mood, imperative, person, 2, number, singular, root, zero |
| 280 | IF any person has zero expression in the indicative mood, THEN it will be 3rd person singular or 1st person singular. |
inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | verb, mood, indicative, person, 1, 3, number, singular, zero, markedness |
| 322 | IF nouns have a syntactic form of the accusative, THEN at least some of its allomorphs are non-zero. | inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | noun, case, accusative, allomorphy, zero |
| 323 | IF nouns have a syntactic form of the ergative, THEN at least some of its allomorphs are non-zero. | inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | noun, case, ergative, allomorphy, zero |
| 334 | IF subject or object agreement or cross-reference markers on verb are postverbal, but under certain conditions can appear in preverbal positions, THEN one of these licensing conditions is the presence of preverbal negation. |
inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | verb agreement, cross-reference, subject, object, affix-order, clitic, negation |
| 336 | IF subject agreement with a transitive verb is by means of a confix, THEN the prefixal and/or suffixal part of that confix will be used for subject agreement on intransitive verbs. |
inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | verb agreement, subject, transitivity, affix-order, confix |
| 337 | IF subject agreement with an intransitive verb is by means of a confix, THEN the prefixal and/or suffixal part of that confix will be used for subject agreement on transitive verbs. |
inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | verb agreement, subject, transitivity, affix-order, confix |
| 341 | IF confixes are used in verbal inflection, THEN the function of at least some of them is to agree with or cross-reference plural or dual subjects and/or objects. |
inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | verb agreement, number, plural, dual, confix |
| 404 | If a construction involves a free and a bound constituent which convey the same meaning and one of them is optional, it is always the free form that is optional and never the bound one. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | optionality |
| 464 | When a language has an opposition of intransitive verbs of action and state, all (or almost all) verbs meaning 'to move in a certain way' will belong with the verbs of action in all formal respects. | inflection, syntax, semantics | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | semantics, verb, transitivity, stative, active |
| 469 | IF the marking for nominal and verbal number is phonologically identical, THEN this will be the case for nouns and verbs of the 3rd person. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | number, person, 3, noun, verb |
| 479 | IF the same progressive constructions are used for present and for non-present tenses, THEN the progressive aspect verb phrase will either be unmarked or marked as present. | inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | tense, present, non-present, aspect, progressive |
| 483 | IF progressive aspect is expressed by a suffix, THEN any tense, mood, or person suffixes will follow the progressive suffix. | inflection | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | aspect, progressive, affix-order, suffix, tense, mood, person |
| 488 | When direct object is zero-marked or non-zero-marked depending on animacy/definiteness, non-zero case marking is used for direct objects higher on the hierarchies. | inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | case, accusative, zero, direct object, animacy, definiteness |
| 494 | When a yes-no question is differentiated from the corresponding assertion by an intonational pattern, the distinctive intonational features of each of these patterns are reckoned from the end of the sentence rather than from the beginning. | syntax, prosodic phonology | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | sentence type, interrogative, yes-no question, intonation |
| 507 | IF both the derivation and inflection follow the root or they both precede the root, THEN the derivation is always between the root and the inflection. | morphology | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | root, order |
| 512 | Whenever there is number agreement between an NP and the verb and such agreement can be suspended depending on the order of NP and verb, it can only be suspended when the verb precedes the NP and the default number form of the verb is always singular. |
inflection, syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | agreement, number, singular, verb, order |
| 526 | IF the adnominal demonstrative and the definite article occur on the same side of the head noun, THEN the demonstrative is consistently more peripheral than the article. | syntax | no genuine implication; rather: provided that | adnominal demonstrative, definite article, noun, order |