In her 2003 study “A multifactorial corpus analysis of adjective order in English”, Stefanie Wulff surveys a number of factors that help explain preferred adjective ordering in adjective-adjective-noun constructions, drawing from previous work in fields ranging from phonology to pragmatics. In the present work, I pose an expansion in the criteria for one of these factors, which should yield a more effective utilization in determining adjective order. In addition, I propose that one factor in Wulff 2003 provides support for the expansion proposed here. Following this, I will explain areas for further research which have come to light over the course of this study, but which have not been treated in this paper.
An interesting and largely unexplained phenomenon in language is the preference of a particular order of adjectives over another. For instance, compare the grammaticality of the utterance in (1) with that of the utterance in (2): (1) small green car (2) *green small car Or, as a more relevant example, compare the utterance in (3) with the one in (4): (3) beautiful colourful jewels (4) ?colourful beautiful jewels
Syntactically, these are all equally well-formed utterances. The vast majority of native English speakers, however, would claim that, according to some intuition, the utterances in (1) and (3) are more natural than the utterances in (2) and (4). Since this order cannot be explained by any known hierarchical relationship, we must look elsewhere for an explanation.
A number of linguists have proposed rules that
help predict adjective order. The vast majority of
work in this field has focused on phonology
One factor presented in Wulff’s study, referred
to as Nominal Character (NOMCHAR), is described
as problematic, and loses much of its predictive
capability when used in a multifactorial analysis.
Wulff addresses this by saying that “the
operationalization of NOMCHAR applied [in her
analysis] is not inadequate, but probably
incomplete in the sense that NOMCHAR should be
more adequately conceived of as a multifactorial
construct of which the tendency towards
nominalization is just one aspect”
This study will treat adjectives and adjective strings that were dealt with Wulff’s study. For a full explanation of the constraints on this analysis, see Wulff 2003, §2 “Scope of the investigation.” For purposes of clarity, I will here delineate a number of parameters within which I have conducted this study.
between adjectives such as “many” and “fourth”
and adjectives such as “red,” “beautiful,” and
“big.” This first group (described by Wulff as
“limiting adjectives”) specifies and constrains the
head, whereas this second group (described by
Wulff as “descriptive adjectives”) serves primarily
to describe, rather than to specify, the head. It is
this second group of adjectives that this study is
concerned with. Additionally, all adjectives used
here must fulfill the description of either a central
or peripheral adjective, according to the four
criteria prescribed by Quirk et al., namely (i)
attributive function; (ii) predicative function after
the copula seem; (iii) ability to be modified by
very; and (iv) gradability by the use of
morphology (-er, -est) or periphrastic comparison
(more, most). Central adjectives must fulfill at
least (i) and (ii), and peripheral adjectives must
fulfill at least (i), otherwise they must fulfill at
least three of the criteria in general
Triples: This survey has considered “triples”,
groups containing two prenominal adjectives
immediately followed by a noun. Though there are
instances in the BNC of more than two adjectives
preceding a single noun, these are rare: In the entire
10 million-words spoken portion of the BNC, there
are 9,647 adjective pairs. Only 426 of these pairs
are immediately followed by another adjectives, or
4.41%. Conversely, the vast majority of these
adjective pairs (6,560, or 68%) are followed by a
noun
Unbroken adjective pairs: This study treats “unbroken” adjective pairs; that is, those that are not joined by a conjunction. The behavior of “broken” adjective strings is not well understood at the present moment. It seems that broken strings are, at least at first glance, less sensitive to adjective ordering restrictions. For example, compare the grammaticality of the utterance in (5) with that of the utterance in (6): (5) *green small car (6) ?green and small car
This is doubtless an area for further research, but one that will not be discussed further in the present work. 3
When analyzing Nominal Character, Wulff draws
primarily from Posner’s (1986) so called
“nouniness principle” – less “noun-like” adjectives
tend to precede more “noun-like” ones. There are
two methods of analyzing the Nominal Character of
an adjective: Posner’s analysis, which has some
noted problems and cannot be effectively utilized in
a corpus analysis1; and Wulff’s analysis, which was
created specifically for operationalization in a
corpus analysis. For purposes of ease and clarity,
this study is concerned with Wulff’s
Here, frequencyadj is the frequency of the word as an adjective and frequencyn is the frequency of the word as a zero-derived noun.
Wulff’s use of Nominal Character: Wulff maintains a number of the parameters of Posner’s original study. The most important of these for the purposes of this study is that Wulff surveys adjectives and zero-derived nouns (e.g., “green” as an adjective ‘green car’ and “green” as a noun ‘I love this green’) to be consistent with Posner’s apparent intentions. For use in her analysis, Wulff determined the number of times each word was tagged as an adjective or as a noun in the BNC, and used these numbers to calculate a word’s Nominal Character value. According to Wulff’s formula for Nominal Character, the higher a word’s Nominal Character value, the more likely it would be to appear as the second adjective in a string (and conversely, the lower its value, the more likely it would be to appear as the first adjective in a string). See §3.1 below for a fuller discussion of Wulff’s formula.
In order to approach a fuller operationalization of Nominal Character, we must stray a bit from Posner’s original criteria: Zero-derivation should not be a strict criterion in determining Nominal Character. If we expand our analysis to include overtly derived adjectives and nouns, we can highlight relationships currently considered outside of the scope of Nominal Character. There is a significant problem with expanding this analysis past zero-derivation, however: In Wulff’s operationalization of nominal character, the BNC’s tags were sufficient to provide the variables needed to solve the equation for Nominal Character, whereas a simple tag search for a single word will not provide us with the information necessary for morphologically distinct, rather than zero-derived, forms. In order to analyze morphologically distinct forms, we must slightly alter Wulff’s formula for Nominal Character. The original formula is represented by (7), and the revised formula is presented in (8): (7) NOMCHAR = 1 –
frequencyadj frequencyadj+ frequencyn frequencyadj frequencyadj+ frequencydn
Here, NOMCHARD is “Nominal Character (Derived)”, frequencyadj is the frequency of an adjective, and frequencydn is the frequency of a noun derived from this adjective (“derived noun”).
Alternatively, NOMCHARD can analyze words with an opposite derivation pattern, i.e. an adjective that is derived (morphologically) from a noun and the noun from which it was derived. In this case, the formula will take the form in (9): (9) NOMCHARD = 1 – frequencyda frequencyda+ frequencyn
The only difference is that here, frequencyn is the frequency of a noun, and frequencyda is the frequency of an adjective derived from this noun (“derived adjective”).
The output of this formula provides the same predictions as Wulff’s formula: The higher a word’s Nominal Character (Derived) value, the more likely it is to be the second adjective in a string, and vice-versa.
Due to a lack of resources and technical expertise, this analysis was not performed automatically, and as a result of this, the test pool is necessarily smaller than the one presented in Wulff – 528,714 words. On the one hand, this manual analysis corrects any instances of incorrect tagging in the BNC. On the other hand, however, this manual analysis increases the possibility for human error – I have checked and double-checked all results, but any errors are my own.
Since this analysis is manual, interpretation of the output is manual as well – by utilizing native speaker intuitions, and drawing generalizations and conclusions when comparing them with a word’s NOMCHARD value. A noted difference between Nominal Character and our expanded Nominal Character (Derived) is that, whereas the vast majority of adjectives (89.1% in Wulff’s analysis) have a Nominal Character value between 0 and 0.1, Nominal Character (Derived) values seem to vary more widely. As a result of this, conclusions regarding the influence of Nominal Character (Derived) on adjective order can be made utilizing a larger portion of the Nominal Character spectrum, making manual interpretation considerably less daunting. The following generalizations draw on the fact that Nominal Character (Derived) values vary more widely, and assume a fairly regular distribution of values from 0 to 1. For now, take these conclusions as generalizations that will be specified and clarified by examples (§4) and explanations of these examples (§5).
frequencya (or frequencyda) is greater than the input of frequencydn (or frequencyn), the output of Nominal Character (Derived) will fall somewhere between 0 and .5, non-inclusive ({0<NOMCHARD<.5}). When an adjective has a Nominal Character (Derived) value between 0 and .5, it is relatively less “noun-like.” These adjectives are more likely to appear as adjective1 (that is, the adjective further from the noun). In a more general sense, this indicates that the quality represented by the adjective is conceptualized by native speakers as somehow more adjectival rather than noun-like – the adjective is the semantically primary member of the pair.
Outputs at .5: When the input of frequencya (or frequencyda) is equal to the input of frequencydn (or frequencyn), the output of Nominal Character (Derived) will be exactly .5 ({NOMCHARD = .5}). When an adjective has a Nominal Character (Derived) value of .5, there can be no definitive statement of whether it should occur generally in adjective1 or adjective2 position, and so its position will be determined by the tendency of the other adjective in the string. For instance, if an adjective with a Nominal Character (Derived) value of .5 is put into a string with an adjective with a value of .2 (which should appear in adjective1 position), the adjective with the value of .5 should appear as adjective2. In the present study, however, no words are presented that have a Nominal Character (Derived) value of exactly .5. Indeed, it would be quite a coincidence if an adjective were to appear exactly as many times as its corresponding noun – but the possibility should not be ruled out entirely. Given the relatively limited scope of the test pool in this study, to do so would be hasty at best.
frequencya (or frequencyda) is less than the input of frequencydn (or frequencyn), the output of Nominal Character (Derived) will fall somewhere between .5 and 1, non-inclusive ({.5<NOMCHARD<1}). When an adjective has a Nominal Character (Derived) value between .5 and 1, it is relatively more “nounlike.” These adjectives are more likely to appear as adjective2 (that is, the adjective closer to the noun). In a more general sense, this indicates that the quality represented by the adjective is conceptualized by native speakers as being somehow more noun-like rather than adjectival – the noun is the semantically primary member of the pair.
See Figure 3.1 for a graphic representation of the tendencies of adjectives of various Nominal Character (Derived) values.
0
.5 Nominal Character (Derived) Value 1
Interpretation in Pairs: When analyzing a pair of adjectives, the individual Nominal Character (Derived) values for each are first interpreted. If it is the case that one adjective should prefer adjective1 position and the other should prefer adjective2 position, there should be no discrepancy in determining the order of the two adjectives. If it is the case, however, that the two adjectives should prefer the same position, say, adjective1, the two values have to be compared with one another. Whichever adjective more strongly prefers this position will occupy it, and force the other adjective into the remaining position. For instance, if two adjectives should prefer adjective1 position, and their corresponding Nominal Character (Derived) values are .1 and .4, the adjective with the value of .1 will occupy adjective1 position, forcing the remaining adjective into adjective2 position.
For this study, a manual search through a test pool of 528,714 words in the BNC was performed for 8 adjectives and corresponding nouns: Four of these Pair # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Pair # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Adjective beautiful colourful wonderful dangerous heavy smooth certain2 positive Pair # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Noun beauty colour wonder danger heaviness smoothness certainty positivity pairs consisted of a noun and an adjective that had been overtly derived from this noun, and four of these pairs consisted of an adjective and a noun that had been overtly derived from this adjective. The pairs are listed in Table 4.1 below. 2 It has been brought to my attention that I overlooked this word’s function as a determiner, and due to time constraints I have not been able to rectify this in the present study. See §6 for further discussion.
When taken together, two adjectives’ Nominal Character (Derived) values can aid us in predicting their position in a triplet. To begin, we will only consider Nominal Character (Derived), and once we have come to a basic understanding of this relationship we will extend the interpretation to reconcile it with Nominal Character as a singular entity.
Nominal Character (Derived): When looking at Nominal Character (Derived) values, we should be able to pair any two of these adjectives and predict their position in a string. The exceptions here are pairs 5 and 8, which do not have enough information in the corpus, and therefore escape analysis: These can be analyzed, however, through the values of other adjectives, as we will see below. Beginning with a random pairing, compare “wonderful” (from pair 3) and “certain” (from pair 7). When we pair these to modify some noun, say “traits,” we find that the ordering is as their values predict. Compare the grammaticality of the utterance in (10) with that of the utterance in (11): (10) certain (.040) wonderful (.384) traits (11) ?wonderful (.384) certain (.040) traits
Native speakers generally accept the grammaticality of the utterance in (10). On the other hand, the grammaticality of the utterance in (11) is context-dependent at best: In the absence of any special emphasis or changes in prosody, this seems a less-grammatical utterance.
To take another example of the predictive capability of Nominal Character (Derived), another random pairing: Take smooth (from pair 6) and colourful (from pair 2), along with a noun, say, “dress.” Compare the grammaticality of the utterance in (12) with that of the utterance in (13): (12) smooth (.036) colourful (.954) dress (13) ?colourful (.954) smooth (.036) dress
The distinction here is, admittedly, less clear than the distinction between (10) and (11). The difference in two adjectives’ Nominal Character (Derived) values should not be taken as a measure of the rigidity of the ordering preference, but rather as a general guideline for ordering preference.
It isworth noting that there are pairings that will not fit this general guideline. Take, for example, “beautiful” (from pair 1) and “smooth” (from pair 6). The predicted ordering is represented in (14), while the preferred ordering is shown in (15): (14) ?smooth (.036) beautiful (.954) door (15) beautiful (.954) smooth (.036) door
This example violates the principle of Nominal Character (Derived). For a full discussion of exceptions to Nominal Character (Derived), see §§6-7 below. Given the apparent multifactorial nature of adjective order, it is not surprising that there are some exceptions to Nominal Character (Derived).
Now, returning to pairs (5) and (8), which could not be properly analyzed in the corpus analysis: We can use a reverse analysis to attempt to find the Nominal Character (Derived) value of these two adjectives. Consider the preferred ordering of “heavy” and “smooth”, shown in (16), and the non-preferred ordering, shown in (17): (16) smooth (.036) heavy (*) door (17) ?heavy (*) smooth (.036) door
For the purposes of this study, this generalization will suffice: By comparing an adjective (which is either derived from a noun, or from which a noun is derived) with an unknown Nominal Character (Derived) value with an adjective with a known Nominal Character (Derived) value, we can approximate a range of values. For instance, in (16) we see that the Nominal Character (Derived) value for “heavy” likely falls somewhere above .036. With enough adjective pairs, the range can be narrowed, and we can estimate a more accurate value. 5
Nominal Character (Derived) is, in essence, a
single aspect of Nominal Character. Use of
Nominal Character (Derived) should generally be
restricted to those adjectives that would not be
properly analyzed through Nominal Character (for
instance, “colourful” is considerably less likely to
appear as a zero-derived noun than it is as
“colour”). In order to use Nominal Character
(Derived) under the umbrella of Nominal
Character, we must make adjustments that take into
consideration the fact that, while Nominal
Character (Derived) values cover a very large
range, the vast majority of Nominal Character
values fall between 0 and .1
generalizations from a pragmatic factor in adjective order, we find that Nominal Character (Derived) fits into Wulff’s framework. Wulff presents a factor, drawing on the work of Bock (1983) and Ney (1982), called General Frequency, that presents a correlation between the number of times an adjective occurs in a corpus (its general frequency) and its proximity to the noun: The more frequently an adjective occurs, the more likely it is to appear as adjective1, further from the noun. By generalizing this factor to take into account an adjective’s relative frequency (i.e., the number of times it occurs as an adjective rather than a noun), we find another way of interpreting Nominal Character (Derived). In this view, the greater the frequency of an adjective, and the lower the frequency of its corresponding noun, the more likely it is to appear as adjective1 in a string (and vice-versa). 6
In general, Nominal Character (Derived) can be used as a secondary aspect of Nominal Character in cases where Nominal Character would not accurately analyze an adjectives trend toward nominalization. Due to the apparent multifactorial nature of adjective ordering restrictions, however, there are times when it seems nominal Character (Derived) cannot properly predict adjective order. When there is significant influence from other factors that have not been considered in the present analysis, there may be a discrepancy in predicting adjective order with Nominal Character (Derived). In these cases, it seems that this factor’s efficacy may be dwarfed by other factors. Nonetheless, by expanding the criteria of Nominal Character we are able to more accurately represent a phenomenon which likely accounts, in part, for adjective order.
Returning to the issue presented in note 2 in §4: It has been pointed out that the usage of ‘certain’ and ‘certainty’ here may fall outside the scope of this study: Its use in (10) and (11) is more akin to a determiner than an adjective. Therefore, as noted by one reviewer, it is possible that rather than preferring adjective1 position, it occupies the determiner position. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, this cannot be rectified in the current analysis. This will, hopefully, be addressed when this analysis is more complete.
Regarding the future of this study, it is this author’s hope that an automated analysis can be performed, in order to provide a more representative sample of adjectives in a larger test pool. Additionally, see §7 for a discussion of further research in morphological factors in adjective ordering. 7
Over the course of this study, a number of conceivable relationships have come to light specifically regarding the status of morphology in determining adjective order that have not yet been considered in a corpus analysis. I will here describe these and give some basic considerations 3 regarding them .
Adverbial Character: Adverbial Character, or ADVCHAR, analyzes the relative frequency of an adjective and its corresponding adverb (for instance, wonderful and wonderfully). This factor predicts that the higher an adjective’s Adverbial Character value, the more likely it is to occur as adjective1 (in contrast to Nominal Character). The formula is shown in (18): (18) ADVCHAR = 1 – frequencyadj frequencyadj+ frequencyadv
Average Nominal Character (Derived): For either (i) an adjective from which a number, n, of nouns can be derived using distinct derivational affixes, or (ii) a noun from which a number, n, of adjectives can be derived using distinct derivational affixes, it may be possible to predict adjective order by calculating the average of the 3 What follows in this section is largely speculation. No corpus analysis has been performed to test these hyptotheses.
Nominal Character (Derived) values for each adjective. For instance, if we take the adjectives green and greenish, and find that they have greatly differing Nominal Character (Derived) values, it may be the case that by comparing the average of these two values with the other adjective in the string, we may be able to correct our prediction. The formula for this is shown in (19):
Where NCD is Nominal Character (Derived) and n is the number of Nominal Character (Derived) values that are being compared.
be a relationship between the derivational affix used to derive an adjective and its place in a twoadjective string. Following the pattern of Nominal Character (Derived) and our generalization of General Frequency, it may be the case that the more often a derivational affix occurs, the more likely it is to force an adjective into adjective1 position. There are two ways to assess an affix’s frequency, represented by (20) and (21): (20) RMF =
frequencyM1 frequencyM1 + … frequencyMn
Where M is a morpheme, M1 is the morpheme in question, and n is the total number of all derivation affixes. Alternatively: (21) RMF = frequencyM1
!
8
In order to more effectively utilize Nominal Character in predicting adjective order, it may prove helpful to expand the analysis past zero-derivation. By including derived forms, certain adjectives may be analyzed more accurately in those situations where Nominal Character may not correctly predict an adjective’s position in a string. More generally, morphological considerations for adjective order may help further our understanding of the phenomenon as a whole.
I am indebted to a number of people for their contributions over the course of this study, most notably Professor Claire Foley, for her comments and guidance, the faculty of the Boston College Slavic & Eastern Languages and Literatures department, my peers Joseph Maimone, Harry Hoy, and Eddie Hasell, and my parents.
adj: adjective AO: adjective order (or adjective ordering restrictions) adv: adverb ADVCHAR: Adverbial Character AVGNCD: Average Nominal Character (Derived) BNC: (Second) British National Corpus da: derived adjective dn: derived noun M: morpheme NOMCHAR: Nominal Character NOMCHARD: Nominal Character (Derived) n: noun (though it may be a variable in certain equations) RMF: Relative Morpheme Frequency
Wortstellung.
Bloomfield, L. 1933. Language. Chicago, London:
Chicago University Press.
Biber, D., S. Johansson, G. Leech, S. Conrad, & E.
Finegan (Eds.) 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.
Bock, J. K. 1982. Toward a Cognitive Psychology of Syntax: Information Processing Contributions to Sentence Formation. Psychological Review, 89, 1-47. Bolinger, Dwight. 1967. Adjectives in attribution and predication. Lingua, 18, 1-34.
English: Cinque, Guglielmo. 2010. The syntax of adjectives: A comparative study. Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 57. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.