A Multifactorial Analysis Of The Order Of Pre-nominal Modifiers In Chinese And English

Word order is an essential part of grammar that covers the arrangement of words in a phrase,clause,or sentence,among which the order of multiple pre-nominal modifiers in a nominal phrase is a complex type.Previous research has established that the order of multiple pre-nominal modifiers is conditioned by morpho-syntax,semantics,pragmatics,and cognitive factors.However,there has been little agreement on how these factors jointly condition the ordering of pre-nominal modifiers,especially that of Chinese,and there has been little exploration into the similarities and differences of the influential factors of the order of pre-nominal modifiers in Chinese and English and the motivation of the similarities and the differences.The present study adopts a corpus-based approach to the analysis of the order of pre-nominal modifiers in two comparable corpora of Chinese and English（CLOB2009,and ToRCH2009,one million words in size respectively）,to explore what factors contribute to the pre-nominal modification ordering in Chinese and English.Logistic regression modelling is performed to determine which factors significantly affect the placement of pre-nominal modifiers in the two languages.The potential motivation for ordering conditions is also discussed.The results show that the factors of different linguistic levels behave differently in the two languages.In Chinese,semantic class,gradeability,affective load,general frequency,and noun-specific frequency significantly influence the order of prenominal modifiers,while in English,semantic class,gradeability,affective load,general frequency,and noun-specific frequency,and length are the significant factors.Except for the common factors,the ordering of Chinese is also significantly influenced by the appearance of "DE（的）".With some cognitive theories which relate to the linguistic factors discussed,it was found the theories either adopted inappropriate linguistic representation and or can only explain a few linguistic facts.We conclude that the order of pre-nominal modifiers in Chinese and English is affected by the factors hierarchically and it is difficult for any cognitive theories to explain the order of pre-nominal modifiers in Chinese and English.The fact that the main influential factors of the order of the pre-nominal modifiers in Chinese and English are semantic factors indicates that semantics is a crucial determiner in both the hypotactic language and the paratactic language,and the different behaviors of the significant factors in the two languages mean that in terms of semantic aspects the Chinese-speaker and the English-speaker have different semantic preferences,and in terms of formal aspects,the English-speaker highlight the formal length of modifiers,while the Chinese-speaker decides the order based on the appearance of DE.Future research should focus on the operationalization of the linguistic facts and a more comprehensive theory to explain the order.