Subjectivity Predicts Adjective Ordering Preferences
Abstract
From English to Hungarian to Mokilese, speakers exhibit strong ordering preferences in multi-adjective strings: “the big blue box” sounds far more natural than “the blue big box.” We show that an adjective’s distance from the modified noun is predicted not by a rigid syntax, but by the adjective’s meaning: less subjective adjectives occur closer to the nouns they modify. This finding provides an example of a broad linguistic universal—adjective ordering preferences—emerging from general properties of cognition.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 2017
- Source ID
- 10.1162/opmi_a_00005
Entities
People
- Gregory Scontras
- Judith Degen
- Noah D. Goodman
Organizations
- James S. McDonnell Foundation
- Office of Naval Research
- Stanford University
- Swiss National Science Foundation
- University of California