Adjective-Noun order

[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 ============================================================]

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