[Lingtyp] Adjective word order

Wed Jan 15 17:38:55 UTC 2025

Dear all,

thank you all for your recommendations on this fascinating topic. There seem to be multiple theories explaining different types of pressures, which may all be equally valid competing factors. The consensus on this issue, if any, may be described by a quote from Scontras (2023, p. 372):

After over a century of work on adjective ordering, many questions—both empirical and theoretical—remain unanswered. However, when it comes to the source of ordering preferences, the picture appears to be relatively clear: “There is no single and all-encompassing answer to the question of how adjectives are ordered linearly in all real speech situations or written texts” (Hetzron 1978, p. 178). In other words, there is no single source of ordering preferences. Rather, the regularities that we witness represent the result of several pressures, some of them conflicting. Considerations of accessibility, processing cost, communicative success, and choice of meaning are all likely to influence what we perceive as ordering preferences—and no doubt there are other considerations yet to be examined.

Regards,
Ian

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朱　易安
JOO, IAN
准教授
Associate Professor
小樽商科大学
Otaru University of Commerce

🌐 ianjoo.github.io
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2025/01/05 05:37, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> 작성:

Dear Ian,

Jennifer Culbertson et al. 2020 have attempted a functional-cognitive explanation, see: Culbertson, J., Schouwstra, M., & Kirby, S. (2020). From the world to word order: Deriving biases in noun phrase order from statistical properties of the world. Language 96(3), 696-717. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lan.2020.0045.

Best regards,
Sasha

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Aleksandrs Berdicevskis
Researcher, Associate professor
Språkbanken Text
Department of Swedish, Multilingualism, Language Technology
University of Gothenburg

On Sat, 4 Jan 2025 at 13:08, Nikolas Gisborne via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>> wrote:
Hi, Ian,

Bob Dixon and Peter Matthews have both written about the order of English pre-nominal adjectives. See:

Dixon, R. M. W. 1982 Where have All the Adjectives Gone?: And Other Essays in Semantics and Syntax, Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110822939
Matthews, P.H. 2014. The Positions of Adjectives in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-positions-of-adjectives-in-english-9780199681594?cc=gb&lang=en&#

All the best,
Nik

On Sat, 4 Jan 2025 at 11:50, Paul Flanagan via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>> wrote:
Hi Ian/ all

My PhD (2014) was on attribute adjective order, with a big focus on English (and an overview of work done on this feature) but with cross-linguistic perspective too. You can find it here: https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/handle/10034/605666.

Many thanks
Paul

Dr Paul Flanagan BA PGCert PhD FHEA
Senior Lecturer in English Language – Division of Communication, Screen & Performance
School for the Creative Industries | Faculty of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
University of Chester
01244 512857
p.flanagan at chester.ac.uk<mailto:p.flanagan at chester.ac.uk>

Flanagan, P.J. (2019). A Certain Romance: Style-shifting in the language of Alex Turner in Arctic Monkeys songs 2006-2018. Language and Literature, 29(1), 82-98.

Editor-in-Chief: Journal of Language and Pop Culture<https://www.benjamins.com/catalog/jlpop>

On 4 Jan 2025, at 11:03, Christian Lehmann via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>> wrote:

CAUTION !

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=====

Hansjakob Seiler published various articles entirely devoted to your question, starting with

Seiler, Hansjakob 1978, "Determination: A functional dimension for inter-language comparison." Seiler, Hansjakob (ed.), Language universals. Papers from the Conference held at Gummersbach/Cologne, Germany, October 3-8, 1976. Tübingen: G. Narr (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik, 111); 301-32.

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Am 04.01.2025 um 11:47 schrieb JOO Ian via Lingtyp:
Dear typologists,

I have come across multiple sources in popular media that the adjectives within an English noun phrase must follow this order: opinion-size-age-shape-color-origin-material-purpose.
For example, "a lovely (opinion) big (size) red (color) wood (material) house” and not “*a wood lovely red big house.”
What’s curious is that I couldn’t find any academic source for this (seemingly convincing) claim. I’m curious to know how strict it is a grammatical rule, what are the functional-cognitive explanations for it, and whether similar rules (or tendencies) are present in other languages.
If anyone could point to any relevant previous research, it would be much appreciated.

From Otaru,
Ian

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
朱　易安
JOO, IAN
准教授
Associate Professor
小樽商科大学
Otaru University of Commerce

🌐 ianjoo.github.io<http://ianjoo.github.io/>
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