Back 10/01/19: Seminari GLiF "Adjective Ordering Restrictions and the Role of Universal Grammar"

10/01/19: Seminari GLiF "Adjective Ordering Restrictions and the Role of Universal Grammar"

Seminari grup de recerca GLiF (Grup de Lingüística Formal)

08.01.2019

 

Títol: "Adjective Ordering Restrictions and the Role of Universal Grammar" a càrrec de Evelina Leivada (UiT-The Arctic University of Norway)

Data: dijous 10 de gener del 2019

Hora: 12.00 h

Lloc: sala de reunions 52.701 - 7a planta edifici 52. Roc Boronat - Campus del Poblenou - UPF

 

Resum: Linguists have often noted that adjective ordering shows a cross-linguistically uniform character (Sproat & Shih 1991, Cinque 1999, Scott 2002). Two types of origin have been proposed for the attested ordering constraints: (i) syntactically imposed restrictions and (ii) restrictions of a cognitive/semantic basis. Under the first approach, the universal order is encoded in Universal Grammar in the form of a syntactic hierarchy (Rizzi & Cinque 2016, Panayidou 2013). The second approach suggests that the ordering restrictions boil down to cognitive and semantic factors, such as subjectivity, inherentness, or absoluteness (Sproat & Shih 1991, Scontras et al. 2017). 

The present study aims to tap into the universality and the rigidity of adjective ordering restrictions from an experimental point of view. We have run an on-line acceptability judgment task with monolingual speakers of Greek (n=140). The task involved three conditions: 1. size-nationality, 2. color-shape, 3. subjective comment-material. Each condition had two orders. In the congruent order, the size adjective preceded the nationality adjective, in agreement with what is taken to be the order imposed by the hierarchy (Scott 2002). In the incongruent order, the hierarchy was violated and the adjective ordering was reversed. Since reaction times were measured, all test structures were carefully matched for length and syntactic structure across orders and conditions.

Our subjects largely accepted the incongruent orders as correct across conditions. The absence of any context-given information in our task entails that speakers could not have interpreted the incongruent orders under a contrastive focus reading that would legitimize the violation of the hierarchy. We discuss our results in the light of different hypotheses, both within and outside the cartographic approach, ultimately contemplating the idea that there is no universal hierarchy of adjective ordering encoded in Universal Grammar (or elsewhere) that imposes a rigid, unmarked order.

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