About the Universals Archive

Within the typology programme of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, 1996–2001, the remit of the project Sprachbaupläne was to collect and document linguistic universals that have been suggested in the relevant literature, in particular those of an implicational kind ("If a language has property [unit, category, rule, construction, pattern, …] X, then it will also have Y"). The main result of this project is The Universals Archive, since 2002 maintained with the support of the Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft of the Universität Konstanz.

The Universals Archive is available as a searchable archive, enabling its users to retrieve universals in terms of any of the individual words or combinations of words that occur in their formulation or in their documentation. It is also possible to browse through the archive.

The documentation of each universal includes its statement, approximately as in the original source (Original), somewhat standardized (Standardized), and possibly also formulaic (Formula). The fields Keywords and Domain classify universals by content. The fields Type, Status, and Quality classify universals by kind. So far as possible, Basis identifies the languages on which the universal is based, and Source gives author(s) and work(s) where it has been suggested. Known evidence potentially at odds with the universal is given in the field Counterexamples. Comments provides cross-references to other universals and possibly explanations of the terminology used.

For a detailed account of the archive's scope, entry structure, search advice, and worked examples of linked implications, see the full Brief Introduction for Prospective Users by Frans Plank & Elena Filimonova.

Archiving and technical assistance over the years: Thilo Dannenmann, Arista Da Silva, Chiara Frigeni, Eike Hinner, Katrin Hockenjos, Shin-Sook Kim, Bernhard Metz, Emilia Nagy, Wolfgang Schellinger, Michael Schroff.

For help beyond the call of duty we thank: Frank Kammerzell (Göttingen), contributing much counterevidence from Egyptian, Coptic, and Akkadian; Matthew Dryer (Buffalo), checking hundreds of word order universals; and several universals proponents for authentication of their own universals, including Sonia Cristofaro (Pavia), Viktor Elshik (Praha), and Elena Kalinina (Moskva).

What is being documented in The Universals Archive are linguistic universals. A few remarks on what is and is not covered:

First, to qualify for inclusion, universals ought to be substantive rather than "design features" whose universality is definitional (such as vocal-auditory channel, evanescence, or duality of patterning): lacking them, a communication system would not be called a natural language in the first place.

Second, the substantive universals entered in the archive are statements preceded by a universal quantifier ranging over all natural languages; in their basic form they are either unconditional ("For all languages, there is or is not p") or conditional — and in particular implicational — prescribing co-variation of two or more logically independent variables ("For all languages, if there is or is not p, then there will or will not be q"). Thus, to be universal, properties must be universally shared or, if they are not shared by all languages, they must not vary independently.

Third, universals are often conceded even by their proponents to be mere tendencies rather than categorical laws; such statistical universals are entered in the archive, unlike those regularities explicitly claimed to be limited to areas or families (Euroversals, Bantuversals, and the like).

Fourth, laws are timeless; still, it is possible for universals to have a time dimension — as in claims that whenever a language has a particular property, it must have acquired it in a particular way and from a particular source.

Fifth, the properties figuring in the universals documented include all conceivable kinds of units, categories, constructions, rules, constraints, principles, or relationships between them, regardless of how concrete or abstract, theory-neutral or theory-bound.

The archive currently includes over 2,000 entries and is constantly being overhauled and updated. The remit was to document existing universals, not to suggest new ones: a putative universal needed to be in print, or at least forthcoming, in order to be entered. All that was added when a universal was being archived were comments of various sorts, contributed by the archivists or drawn from the literature.

Users can access the archive in two ways: by browsing or by searching.

When searching, universals can be retrieved in terms of any string of symbols occurring in any field of an entry — from Number to Comments. Searches can target a single field or combine terms across multiple fields with AND or OR. The search matches entries where the term begins with the entered string (e.g., aggl finds agglutination, agglutinative, agglutinating) or is identical with it.

Within one field, any number of words can be entered, separated by spaces. For example, entering switch-reference order in the Keywords or Original field will return all entries where both terms co-occur — useful for exploring co-variation between variables.

Thematically related universals can also be found by following cross-references in the Comments field of individual entries.

Since much relevant literature has so far remained unread by the local archivists, and some has no doubt been misread, the coverage of structural areas is patchy. To bring the archive up to scratch, the cooperation of the typological community is solicited. Constructive comments of all kinds are welcome. In particular: send in, or correct, your own universals and those of your friends and enemies — or at any rate counterexamples to those of the latter.

Registered users may submit new entries for review. Submissions are assessed by the editorial team before publication. Request an account to submit an entry.

The Universals Archive is paired with the Raritätenkabinett (Rara), which documents rare or unusual grammatical phenomena — cases that are striking precisely because they challenge or violate known universals. Many Rara entries carry a Violates field referencing a specific universal in this archive.

Plank, Frans & Elena Filimonova (2000). The Universals Archive: A Brief Introduction for Prospective Users. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 53, 109–123. [Updated by Frans Plank and Thomas Mayer, Aug. 2006.]

Burquest, Donald A. et al. (1982). Language universals. Research Papers of the Texas SIL 11.

Décsy, Gyula (1987). A Select Catalog of Language Universals. Bloomington: Eurolingua.

Filimonova, Elena (1999a). Toward universals of pronominal plural inflection, or Do pronouns always take after nouns? In: Proceedings of the 34th Colloquium of Linguistics. Bern: Lang.

Filimonova, Elena (1999b). The noun-phrase hierarchy and relational marking: The counter-evidence. Unpublished, Universität Konstanz. [Now in Linguistic Typology 9 (2005) 77–113.]

Greenberg, Joseph H. (1963). Some universals of grammar, with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In: Greenberg (ed.) (1963), 73–113.

Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.) (1963). Universals of Language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Hockett, Charles F. (1963). The problem of universals in language. In: Greenberg (ed.) (1963), 1–29.

Kirby, Simon (1995). EUROTYP Noun Phrase Universals Archive. http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~eurotyp/

Plank, Frans (1998). The co-variation of phonology with morphology and syntax: A hopeful history. Linguistic Typology 2, 195–230.

Plank, Frans (1999). Split morphology: How agglutination and flexion mix. Linguistic Typology 3, 279–340.

Plank, Frans & Wolfgang Schellinger (1997). The uneven distribution of genders over numbers: Greenberg Nos. 37 and 45. Linguistic Typology 1, 53–101.

Plank, Frans & Wolfgang Schellinger (2000). Dual laws in (no) time. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 53, 46–52.