A Multifactorial Corpus Analysis on Preferred English Prenominal Adjective Order

Abstract

This study aims to find out whether British English (BrE) and American English (AmE) have different preferences over prenominal adjective order (AO) in terms of the influential factors. According to the literature, seven factors are reported to be influential in governing English prenominal adjective order (AO). These factors include: syntactic, semantic, phonological and psychological aspects. The purpose of this study is to examine whether British English (BrE) and American English (AmE) have different preferences in regard to prenominal AO in terms of the influential factors. A multifactorial methodology was adopted to investigate native speakers' AO choices via computing a regression model by computer R language. It was found that there were more similarities than differences between BrE and AmE in their preference over AO, and the factor of IndComp is reported to significantly influence only AmE but not BrE. The factors of Length, AffLoad and Freq are positively influencing both BrE and AmE on prenominal AO, which is in accordance with the literature. Howver, the factors of SemClose and SegAlt had negative influences which was inconsistent with the literature. Further, the factor of NomChar is reported to have influence on neither BrE nor AmE.