Articlegreen2005

Deriving Greenberg's Universal 20 and Its Exceptions

1,018 citations0/0 files storedLinguistic Inquiry

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Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation Historical Linguistics and Language Studies Categorization, perception, and language

Abstract

Of the 24 mathematically possible orders of the four elements demonstrative, numeral, adjective, and noun, only 14 appear to be attested in the languages of the world. Some of these are unexpected under Greenberg's Universal 20. Here it is proposed that the actually attested orders, and none of the unattested ones, are derivable from a single, universal, order of Merge (Dem > Num > Adj > N) and from independent conditions on phrasal movement.

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References

2014The Minimalist Program 1994The antisymmetry of syntax 1963Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements 1999Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective 2013Language typology and syntactic description 1981Handbook of Australian Languages 1999Pacific Languages: An Introduction

Cited by

2012The Cartography of Syntactic Structures 2009The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis 2012A Frames Approach to Semantic Analysis 2014Cross-Linguistic Variation and Efficiency 2014A Syntactic Universal and Its Consequences 2013Russian Case Morphology and the Syntactic Categories 2016Functional Categories and Syntactic Theory 20082 Universals Constrain Change; Change Results in Typological Generalizations

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