It's a dotted blue big star: on adjective ordering in a post-nominal language

Trainin, Nitzan; Shetreet, Einat

doi:10.1080/23273798.2020.1839664

Cited by 8 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Both noun modifiers in general and adjectives specifically have been reported to follow this pattern, with a largely-universal pre-nominal ordering and a mirror, same, or 'free' post-nominal order (Hetzron, 1978). There is as yet no large-scale empirical evidence for this claim, though Trainin and Shetreet (2021) suggest that Hebrew NAA order preferences may be weaker than English AAN for a restricted set of adjective classes.…”

Section: Asymmetriesmentioning

confidence: 96%

Predicting cross-linguistic adjective order with information gain

Dyer¹,

Futrell²,

Liu³

et al. 2021

Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL-IJCNLP 2021

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Languages vary in their placement of multiple adjectives before, after, or surrounding the noun, but they typically exhibit strong intralanguage tendencies on the relative order of those adjectives (e.g., the preference for 'big blue box' in English, 'grande boîte bleue' in French, and 'als . undūq al'azraq alkabīr' in Arabic). We advance a new quantitative account of adjective order across typologically-distinct languages based on maximizing information gain. Our model addresses the left-right asymmetry of French-type ANA sequences with the same approach as AAN and NAA orderings, without appeal to other mechanisms. We find that, across 32 languages, the preferred order of adjectives mirrors an efficient algorithm of maximizing information gain.

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Section: Asymmetriesmentioning

confidence: 96%

Predicting cross-linguistic adjective order with information gain

Dyer¹,

Futrell²,

Liu³

et al. 2021

Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL-IJCNLP 2021

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show abstract

“…As mentioned above, adjective ordering preferences are considered robust in many languages (Cinque, 1994;Danks & Glucksberg, 1971;Dixon, 1982;Laenzlinger, 2005;Martin, 1969aMartin, , 1969bMartin & Molfese, 1972;Scontras et al, 2017Scontras et al, , 2019Scott, 2002;Svenonius, 2008;Whorf, 1945), with some cross-linguistic variance (Cinque, 1994;Sproat & Shih, 1991). However, a recent study (Trainin & Shetreet, 2021) suggests that adjective ordering preferences in Hebrew (a post-nominal language where adjectives appear after the noun they modify) are not as robust as has been previously claimed (Shlonsky, 2004; for similar results in Spanish, another postnominal language, see Rosales & Scontras, 2019). In production, naturalness rating, and forced-choice tasks, ordering preferences in Hebrew were shown to be significantly weaker than in English.…”

Section: The Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, they are easy to depict visually, and therefore could be used for our visual task. Second, we had converging evidence from three tasks (Trainin & Shetreet, 2021) for the hierarchy of ordering preferences when using adjectives from these classes, which allowed us to examine multiple contrasts of ordering preferences. This hierarchy is given in (1).…”

Section: The Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1). We used the same adjective words as in Trainin and Shetreet (2021), for better confidence as per the differences in naturalness between the descriptions in the different adjective orders. Each image was paired with an auditory description including the three features: size, color, and pattern.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The difference between conditions in terms of similarity in form and naturalness, and in terms of whether or not an unnatural order was included. Difference in naturalness is determined by Trainin and Shetreet (2021). Similarity in form means that adjectives from one of the semantic classes are placed in the same position across both orders…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Learning speaker-specific linguistic ‘style’ is mediated by deviance from common language use

Trainin

Shetreet

2023

Lang. cogn.

Self Cite

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Different speakers sometimes convey similar meanings differently. This study examined whether listeners could learn to associate a specific linguistic ‘style’ with a certain speaker, with no apparent difference in meaning, and the role of unnatural linguistic choices (or unexpectedness) in such learning. We created an inter-speaker variation in ‘style’ using the weak adjective ordering preferences in Hebrew. Participants were exposed to two different speakers, each producing a different adjective order, consistently. We manipulated the combinations of order pairings, based on their naturalness (with two natural orders, a natural and an unnatural order, and two unnatural orders), and examined participants’ ability to associate a unique order with a specific speaker. In two experiments, using different statistical analyses, we show that listeners can learn speaker-specific language use when it is irrelevant for meaning inferences, when deviance from natural or expected language use is involved. We further discuss whether learning may be facilitated by differences in naturalness or structural form. Our findings suggest that listeners are sensitive to inter-speaker variability in ‘style’, mostly when this ‘style’ is unexpected. This is in line with the predictions of Surprisal theory, and may suggest that surprisal plays a major role in learning speaker-specific language use.

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A cognitive psychological model of linguistic intuitions: Polysemy and predicate order effects in copredication sentences

Michel,

Löhr

2024

Lingua

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It's a dotted blue big star: on adjective ordering in a post-nominal language

Cited by 8 publications

References 30 publications

Predicting cross-linguistic adjective order with information gain

Predicting cross-linguistic adjective order with information gain

Learning speaker-specific linguistic ‘style’ is mediated by deviance from common language use

A cognitive psychological model of linguistic intuitions: Polysemy and predicate order effects in copredication sentences

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