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Universal 723:

Posted in Universals Archive

Universal 723:

Original
Morphemes subject to a rule which assigns a tone opposite to an adjacent tone are much more frequently encountered than morphemes in which some other phonological property is governed by a rule of polarity.
Standardized
IF non-tonal phonological properties are assigned opposite values to an adjacent occurrence of that property within a morpheme, then the assignment of tones (provided the language is tonal) will also be governed by rules of polarity.
Keywords
tone, morpheme
Domain
phonology
Type
implication
Status
achronic
Quality
statistical
Basis
languages in Maddieson 1978
Source
Maddieson 1978: 353
Counterexamples
The original is not REALLY tantamount to an implication valid for each individual language. It would be consistent with lots of tonal languages having tone polarity and very little other phonological polarity, but a few tonal languages having no tonal polarity but some other phonological polarity. Overall, tonal polarity would still be more frequent.

One Comment

  1. FP
    FP

    The original is not REALLY tantamount to an implication valid for each individual language. It would be consistent with lots of tonal languages having tone polarity and very little other phonological polarity, but a few tonal languages having no tonal polarity but some other phonological polarity. Overall, tonal polarity would still be more frequent.

    1. May 2020

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