Universal #1433

Legacy number: 1433

 Number  1429
 Original  If a language lacks the category of gender, then hydronyms always contain categorial markers.
 Standardized  IF there is no gender, THEN hydronyms always contain formatives classifying them as such.
 Formula  (agglutinative morphology ⇒)¬ gender ⇒ categorial markers with hydronyms
 Keywords  gender, hydronym, agglutination
 Domain  inflection, lexicon
 Type  implication
 Status  achronic
 Quality  absolute
 Basis  unspecified
 Source  Serebrennikov 1974: 296

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Discussion
Notes
In agglutinative languages, hydronyms most commonly contain words that function as categorial markers, e.g. in Komi, river names usually have words "ju" or "va", meaning 'river'. Finnish river names contanin the word "joki": Kalajoki, Pühajoki, Kemijoki. Conversely, Russian hydronyms are characterized by a considerable number of elliptic names, e.g. Belaja (reka) - 'white (river)', Velikaja (reka) - 'great (river)'. (Serebrennikov 1974: 296)
Comment
Frans Plank · 3 Aug 2006
In agglutinative languages, hydronyms most commonly contain words that function as categorial markers, e.g. in Komi, river names usually have words "ju" or "va", meaning 'river'. Finnish river names contanin the word "joki": Kalajoki, Pühajoki, Kemijoki.
Conversely, Russian hydronyms are characterized by a considerable number of elliptic names, e.g. Belaja (reka) - 'white (river)', Velikaja (reka) - 'great (river)'. (Serebrennikov 1974: 296)