The Semantics and Syntax of English Stacked Adjectives

Abstract

This paper inquires into the ordering among English stacked adjectives from a semantic point of view, and presents that the semantic criterion for the ordering is well supported by syntax. After making a brief survey of previous studies, I come to a conclusion that the adjectival ordering is ascribed to what we may call a semantic closeness condition. This condition, for example, provides an account for the shift in the adjectival ordering as seen in an adventurous young man and a man who is young and adventurous, but apparently fails to cover such a pair of fragments with no shift in the order as a brown and yellow sheet and a sheet that is brown and yellow. I claim, however, that in actual fact the semantic closeness condition can provide a unified account for those pairs above if Kayne's (1994) antisymmetric view of syntax is assumed along with Scott's (2002) analysis of stacked adjectives as specifiers of semantically related functional projections. To conclude, this paper presents how a semantic criterion for the adjectival ordering can find support in syntax.