Adjective-Noun order

[bingfu Lu]

May I suggest paying attention to the following 4 relevant phenomena.
1) A/N is overwhelmingly more compact prosodically than N//A is, as indicated by the following:

(1)               a.            a hard-to-pronounce Chinese
sound    
                       b.            a Chinese sound hard to
pronounce
(2)               a.            the above-average salary                                  b.            the salary above average 
(3)               a.            a five-year old boy                              
                       b.            a boy five years old. 


       (4)         a.            the
clearly dominant candidates
                              b.            *the dominant clearly dominants 
                              c.            the candidates clearly dominant
                              d.            ?the candidates dominant clearly

2) The A in N//A is overwhelmingly richer in morphology than that in A/N is, as indicated by:
           (5)a.            el    primer
buen capitilo                        
        b.            el
capitilo primero bueno
        c.            el
capitilo bueno primero

3) The word order within A of N//A is overwhelmingly freer than that in A/N is, as indicated the above (4) and 

(5).

4) The A in N//A is overwhelmingly freer to expand than that in A/N is, as indicated by:
       (6) a. a higher (*than the clouds) mountain
             b. a mountain higher than the clouds 


These phenomena seem to hint that A in N//A is more like a predicate of the N, rather than just being a modifier. Or in other words,  A in N//A carries more features of predication than that in A/N.

Bingfu Lu
The Institute for Linguistic TypologyNanchang University, China





>________________________________
> From: "Giorgio Francesco Arcodia  --              ============================================================              Ljuba Veselinova, Associate Professor Dept of Linguistics,              Stockholm University, S-10691 Stockholm,              Sweden Phone: +46-8-16-2332 Fax: +46-8-15 5389 URL  :              http://www2.ling.su.se/staff/ljuba/  "We learn by going where we              want to go."                                           Julia              Cameron              ============================================================@yahoo.com" <Giorgio Francesco Arcodia  --              ============================================================              Ljuba Veselinova, Associate Professor Dept of Linguistics,              Stockholm University, S-10691 Stockholm,              Sweden Phone: +46-8-16-2332 Fax: +46-8-15 5389 URL  :              http://www2.ling.su.se/staff/ljuba/  "We learn by going where we              want to go."   
                                        Julia              Cameron              ============================================================@yahoo.com>
>To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG 
>Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2013 1:21 AM
>Subject: Re: Adjective-Noun order
> 
>On (Standard Mandarin) Chinese:
>
>Adjectives may appear after the noun (predicative function) or before the noun (modifying function). However, there is both a set of non-predicative adjectives, which thus may appear only before the noun, and a set of predicative-only adjectives, which thus may appear only after the noun. This is lexically determined.
>If you want I can send you a paper on the topic.
>
>Giorgio F. Arcodia
>
>-- Dr. Giorgio Francesco Arcodia
>Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
>Dipartimento di Scienze Umane per la Formazione
>Edificio U6 - stanza 4101
>Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo, 1
>20126 Milano
>
>Tel.: (+39) 02 6448 4946
>Fax: (+39) 02 6448 4863
>E-mail: giorgio.arcodia at unimib.it
>
>
>On Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:11:21 -0500
> Mike Klein <kdogg36 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>> Jenny,
>> 
>> Adjectives in Chinese always precede the noun, but there are two different
>> patterns: A de N (more common) and A N. The article below discusses the
>> syntactic and semantic differences. I don't know if lexical determination
>> plays a role, but I wouldn't be surprised if the alternation in Mandarin
>> had something in common with the word order alternation in Romance
>> languages.
>> 
>> Mike Klein
>> 
>> Waltraud, Paul (2005). Adjectival modification in Mandarin Chinese and
>> related issues. *Linguistics, 43*(4), pp. 757-793.
>> 
>> On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 11:55 AM, Jennifer Culbertson <jculber4 at gmu.edu>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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