Hierarchies and the choice of left conjuncts (with particular attention to English)

Abstract

Over the last decade or so, hierarchies such as the animacy hierarchy, the personal hierarchy, the case hierarchy, the definiticity and referentiality hierarchies and so forth have been identified as determinants of constituent order. It is my intention in this paper to review the set of hierarchies and rank them as determinants of NP sequencing in English. I shall from time to time compare and contrast the effect of a hierarchy in other languages with what we find in English; but it remains to be seen whether the ranking which obtains for English has a wider application: I make noa prioriclaim that it does. The hierarchies and families of hierarchies are ranked as follows, from the most powerful determinant to the least:(1) the familiarity hierarchy;(2) the topic < comment, given < new hierarchies;(3) the universal sequencing conventions;(4) the definiticity and referentiality hierarchies;(5) the personal, social status, and role hierarchies;(6) the dominant descriptor hierarchies;(7) the formal hierarchies.