Adjective Placement in English/Spanish Mixed Determiner Phrases: Insights from Acceptability Judgments

Abstract

The present study examines the relative order of noun-adjective sequences within code-switched Determiner Phrases. Several hypotheses have been considered: (i) Order is a property defined by the noun; (ii) it is a property defined by the adjective; (iii) it is a property governed by the carrier phrase. The studies that have investigated the issue all assume that the class of adjectives is homogeneous, but in fact, there exist several sub-classes of adjectives which in many languages, including Spanish, exhibit distinct ordering properties. We propose to add the variable ‘adjective type’ to our study and use code-switching of English/Spanish, two languages that differ in the position of adjectives, as our database. A total of thirty English/Spanish heritage speakers took part in an experiment. Our results show that both the language of the adjective and the carrier phrase are significant factors of word order in the noun phrase; on the other hand, the noun itself does not seem to play a role.