Work

Subjectivity Predicts Adjective Ordering Preferences

Year: 2017

Type: article

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.

Source: Open Mind

DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00005

Authors: Gregory Scontras, Judith Degen, Noah D. Goodman

Institutions: University of California, Irvine, Stanford University

Language: English

Topic: Categorization, perception, and language

Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $950

Funders: National Science Foundation, James S. McDonnell Foundation, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, Office of Naval Research