Universal #1201

Legacy number: 1201

 Number  1197
 Original  Other things being equal, the more analytic a language is, the more regular is its phraseological system.
 Standardized  IF a language is (more or less) analytic, THEN it has a (more or less) regular phraseological system.
 Formula  more analytic ⇒ more regular phraseology
 Keywords  phraseology, analytic
 Domain  morphology, lexicon
 Type  implication
 Status  achronic but presumably diachronically motivated
 Quality  statistical
 Basis  English, Dutch, German
 Source  Dobrovol’skij 1992: 297

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Discussion
Notes
An indicator of high regularity of a phraseological system is its affinity for discreteness and orderliness, for building sets, series and paradigms, and for repeated use of the same lexical elements. The degree of regularity of phraseological system is thus conditioned by the activity of structural-combinatorial principle. In other words, the more regular the phraseological system of a language is, the more uniform is its internal structure and the more often phraseologization picks up structural patterns already known and previously used. (Dobrovol’skij 1992: 297-8)
Comment
Frans Plank · 3 Aug 2006
An indicator of high regularity of a phraseological system is its affinity for discreteness and orderliness, for building sets, series and paradigms, and for repeated use of the same lexical elements. The degree of regularity of phraseological system is thus conditioned by the activity of structural-combinatorial principle. In other words, the more regular the phraseological system of a language is, the more uniform is its internal structure and the more often phraseologization picks up structural patterns already known and previously used. (Dobrovol'skij 1992: 297-8)