The Postnominal Position of Modifiers in the Gurbet Romani Noun Phrase: A Corpus-Based Study

Abstract

The study aims to explore the factors underlying the non-canonical postnominal positioning of adnominal modifiers in the noun phrase in the Gurbet Romani variety spoken in Eastern Serbia. The noun phrases are excerpted from the Knjaževac Gurbet Romani corpus, which consists of adults' and children's samples of transcribed oral narratives. The quantitative analysis shows that the prenominal position of modifiers is the default one, given the low frequency of postposed modifiers in the adults' and children's samples (3.7% and 1.3%, respectively). The main part of the study is focused on the reasons for the non-canonical positioning of modifiers in the NP, and points towards several pragmatic factors as relevant for the postnominal positioning: the contrastive and information focus and stylistic effects.