Abstract

Ordering of predicative adjectives within the Noun Phrase varies cross linguistically in systematic ways (Cinque 2010). In Spanish adjectival ordering exhibits more flexibility than in English. To test the extent to which the stricter word order in English affects Spanish adjectival ordering, 35 heritage bilingual Spanish speakers living in an English dominant environment were asked to judge adjectival word orders and interpret adjective elisions. Results indicate acceptance of adjectival ordering involving roll up movement (Cinque 2010), not possible in English. They also show the ability to interpret elisions in contexts involving the same type of movement. These results provide evidence for the availability of flexible ordering in Spanish even among Spanish-English bilinguals.

Highlights

  • Their post-nominal position has been tied to the analysis of Nounmovement (Bernstein 1991), based on a parallelism with v-movement (Pollock 1989), and to NP-movement (Lamarche 1989, Cinque 2010, Sánchez 1996, 2020 and others)

  • We explore how heritage speakers of Spanish who live in an English dominant environment judge adjectival word orders and interpret examples in which some of the adjectives are elided

  • Results from the AJT task We explored whether participants reacted differently to items depending on the order of the adjectives

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Summary

Introduction

Their post-nominal position has been tied to the analysis of Nounmovement (Bernstein 1991), based on a parallelism with v-movement (Pollock 1989), and to NP-movement (Lamarche 1989, Cinque 2010, Sánchez 1996, 2020 and others) Their ordering within the DP (Determiner Phrase) has been the subject of an analysis by Cinque (2010) in which so-called direct modifier adjectives occupy the specifier of a sequence of ordered projections, as shown in (6). Cinque (2010) notes the availability of a second source for adjectives as indirect modifiers, analyzed as reduced relative clauses, that makes it possible to alter the strict word order in (4). Recursivity of predicative adjectives regardless of ordering, has been attested in Spanish and analyzed as the result of the availability of predicate structures within the DP (Sánchez 1996, 2020).

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