Adjective-Noun order

[Daniel Hieber]

Being a feature of Romance languages, it's of course no surprise that Latin
exhibits this as well. Typically in Latin the adjective follows the noun,
except in cases where the adjective indicates quantity or size (and
Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_grammar#Word_order> adds
beauty, goodness, or truth). Thus:

magna urbs
large city

cīvēs laetī
citizens happy

In Spanish this is more semantically-conditioned than lexical. Restrictive
/ classificational uses tend to come after the noun, while nonrestritive /
qualificational senses come before:

amigo viejo 'friend who is old'
viejo amigo 'old/dear/longtime friend'


On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Hartmut Haberland <hartmut at ruc.dk> wrote:

> There are also a number of non-loans which can be used such in German,
> especially in expressions for food:
>
> Forelle blau (slightly boiled with vinegar or white wine added to the
> water, same as French truite au bleu; also Karpfen blau)
> Aal satt (as much eel as you can eat)
>
> I suspect many of them are fixed collocations rather than productive
> constructions.
>
> Less common in Danish:
>
> latte to go: a caffe latte to be consumed outside the premises
>
> Hartmut Haberland
>
> ________________________________________
> Fra: Discussion List for ALT [LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] på
> vegne af Jan Wohlgemuth [jan at LINGUIST.DE]
> Sendt: 19. februar 2013 18:40
> Til: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> Emne: 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
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-- 

Omnis habet sua dona dies.
     ~ Martial
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