Subjectivity Predicts Adjective Ordering Preferences. Scontras, G., Degen, J., & Goodman, N. D. Open Mind, 1(1):53–66, February, 2017.
doi  abstract   bibtex   
From English to Hungarian to Mokilese, speakers exhibit strong ordering preferences in multi-adjective strings: ``the big blue box'' sounds far more natural than ``the blue big box.'' We show that an adjective's distance from the modified noun is predicted not by a rigid syntax, but by the adjective's meaning: less subjective adjectives occur closer to the nouns they modify. This finding provides an example of a broad linguistic universal—adjective ordering preferences—emerging from general properties of cognition.
@article{ScontrasEtAl2017,
  title = {Subjectivity {{Predicts Adjective Ordering Preferences}}},
  author = {Scontras, Gregory and Degen, Judith and Goodman, Noah D.},
  year = {2017},
  month = feb,
  volume = {1},
  pages = {53--66},
  issn = {2470-2986},
  doi = {10.1162/OPMI_a_00005},
  abstract = {From English to Hungarian to Mokilese, speakers exhibit strong ordering preferences in multi-adjective strings: ``the big blue box'' sounds far more natural than ``the blue big box.'' We show that an adjective's distance from the modified noun is predicted not by a rigid syntax, but by the adjective's meaning: less subjective adjectives occur closer to the nouns they modify. This finding provides an example of a broad linguistic universal\textemdash adjective ordering preferences\textemdash emerging from general properties of cognition.},
  file = {/Users/mmaldona/Zotero/storage/A39EYHLW/2019-CNP.pdf;/Users/mmaldona/Zotero/storage/P8DRMW3W/Scontras et al. - 2017 - Subjectivity Predicts Adjective Ordering Preferenc.pdf},
  journal = {Open Mind},
  language = {en},
  number = {1}
}

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