Guest speaker: Matthew Dryer

We have a guest speaker event today, Friday, Sept 27th, at 3pm (it will start at 3:10pm, U of T time).

Matthew S. Dryer (University at Buffalo) is presenting his work entitled "On the Order of Demonstrative, Numeral, Adjective and Noun" (see abstract below).

The talk will take place in Sidney Smith 560A, and a reception will follow in the Linguistics lounge.

On the Order of Demonstrative, Numeral, Adjective and Noun
This paper reports on a typological study of the order of demonstrative, numeral, adjective, and noun, based on a sample of 442 languages. I propose a set of five surface principles which interact to predict the relative frequency of the different orders of these four elements. I compare my approach to a generative account of the same phenomenon by Cinque (2005). I argue that my approach accounts for the relative frequency of the different orders better than Cinque’s and that his account suffers in three respects: (1) my sample contains instances of four orders that Cinque’s account predicts should not exist; (2) two orders are considerably more common than his account predicts; and (3) two orders are considerably less common than his account predicts. I also argue that the principles underlying the different orders of these four elements must be interpreted in terms of semantic categories and that any attempt to account for them syntactically cannot work.