Adjective-Noun order

[Pat-El, Na'ama]

In Classical Ethiopic, a Semitic language, quantifying adjectives and ordinal numbers moved to preposition, while other adjectives remain post posed. This is likely a result of contact with Cushitic languages and eventually all modifiers moved to preposition. More info and examples here:

Greta D. Little (1974) Syntactic Evidence of Contact: Cushitic Influence on Amharic, in: Shuy R. W. and Bailey C-J N. (eds.) Towards Tomorrow's Linguistics, Georgetown U Press, pp. 267-275.

Na'ama




_______________________________
Na'ama Pat-El
The University of Texas at Austin-DMES
1 University Station, F9400
Austin, TX 78712-0527

AY 2012-2013:
Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies (SCAS)
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On Feb 19, 2013, at 17:55 , Jennifer Culbertson wrote:

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

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