question about patterns of N-A, A-N order

Matthew Dryer dryer at buffalo.edu
Wed Oct 15 16:13:58 UTC 2008


I am not exactly sure what Clancy is asking.  If he is asking whether 
languages with dominant NAdj order are more likely to allow AdjN as a 
possible alternative order than languages with dominant AdjN order are to 
allow NAdj as a possible alternative order, then the answer appears to be 
no.

In my database, I code 121 languages as being dominant NAdj, with AdjN as 
an alternate order, and 83 languages as dominant AdjN, with NAdj as a 
dominant order.  Since languages with dominant order NAdj outnumber 
languages with dominant AdjN order by over 2 to 1 in my database, this 
suggests a slight trend in the opposite direction from that suggested by 
Clancy.

Matthew Dryer

--On Friday, October 10, 2008 5:11 PM -0400 "Clements, Joseph Clancy" 
<clements at indiana.edu> wrote:

> In morphology, Cutler, Hawkins, et al (1985) found that Prep-VO languages
> have prefixes and suffixes and Postp-OV languages have almost exclusively
> suffixes.
>
> It has been shown that adj order relative to its modified N does not
> pattern with Prep-VO or Postp-OV languages. However, the following looks
> like a pattern in the few languages I've worked with: there are languages
> that have almost exclusively A-N order (e.g. English, German, the
> Neo-Aryan languages) and languages with N-A order that also have A-N
> order (e.g. the Romance languages).
>
> My question: does anyone know of any studies on A-N/N-A order patterns in
> the world's languages?
>
> Any references would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Clancy
>
>
>
>
> J. Clancy Clements, Professor
> Director of Undergraduate Studies
> Depts. of Linguistics & Spanish and Portuguese
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