Adjective-Noun order

[Paolo Ramat]

In Italian and other Romance lgs. the 'violation' of the N+ADJ rule entails 
in many cases a semantic difference: 'Un buon uomo' ("a good=poor fellow") 
is different from 'Un uomo buono' ("a good man"), and 'un brav'uomo' ("a 
good fellow") is not necessarily 'un uomo bravo' ("a  clever/skilful man"). 
'Un soldato semplice' is a private (military term) while  "un semplice 
soldato" means "just a private (and nothing more)". Etc.

Best

Prof.Paolo Ramat
Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori (IUSS )
Direttore del Centro "Lingue d'Europa: tipologia, storia e sociolinguistica" 
(LETiSS)
Palazzo del Broletto - Piazza della Vittoria

27100 Pavia
tel. ++390382375811
fax ++390382375899

-----Messaggio originale----- 
From: Jan Wohlgemuth
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2013 6:40 PM
To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: Adjective-Noun order

Dear Jennifer,
in German, the order changed, or rather became less flexible in Old High
German. Modern German only has a few adjectives that can "violate" the
rule of Adj-N and follow the noun while being uninflected:

purer Spaß : Spaß pur
pure.M.Nom.Sg. fun : fun pure

It only works with a handful of adjectives; many -if not most- of them
are loanwords e.g. (pur, light, live, online)

Best,
Jan


Am 19.02.2013 17:55, schrieb Jennifer Culbertson:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm interested in examples of languages which have lexically-determined
> exceptions to a general adjective placement rule. A very well-documented
> example is French, in which adjectives are generally post-nominal but a
> (small) lexically-determined set can be pre-nominal. Do you know of other
> examples?
>
> I'm also interested in whether anyone knows of any typological work which
> might suggest whether this kind of variation is more common for adjectives
> compared to numerals (or vice versa). I know of cases in which the
> placement of the numerals one and/or two differ from other numerals, but I
> don't have a sense for how common that is.
>
> Thanks in advance for your help!
>
> Jennifer Culbertson
> Assistant Professor
> Linguistics Program
> George Mason University
>


-- 
Jan Wohlgemuth, M.A.
Institut für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Muenster
==================================================================
         * * * * * * * Studentische Tagung Sprachwissenschaft * * * * * * *
         * * * * * * * * * www.stuts.de / www.stuts.org * * * * * * * * * *
         * * * * * * * *  www.linguisten.de / www.linglink.de * * * * * * *
         * * * * * * * * * * * * *  www.linguist.de * * * * * * * * * * * *
==================================================================