Adjective Ordering Across Languages

Abstract

Adjective ordering preferences stand as perhaps one of the best candidates for a true linguistic universal: When multiple adjectives are strung together in service of modifying some noun, speakers of different languages¤mdash¤from English to Mandarin to Hebrew¤mdash¤exhibit robust and reliable preferences concerning the relative order of those adjectives. More importantly, despite the diversity of the languages investigated, the very same preferences surface over and over again. This tantalizing regularity has led to decades of research pursuing the source of these preferences. This article offers an overview of the findings and proposals that have resulted.