Word order- Suffixal Pl and Art

In many languages, although the individual subhierarchies such as Dem– Num–Adj and Art–Pl–N are respected, the complete hierarchical order is not evident on the surface; for example Norwegian could be characterized as having the order in (1), as illustrated in (2).

I argue that this follows if n, Pl, and Art are heads, while Num and Adj are phrases, and cluster formation involves movements which ensure that certain heads wind up adjacent.

If phrasal movement can derive N–Pl–Def order, then a Norwegian noun phrase like the one in (3) could have a structure something like that in (4) (see Vangsnes 1999, 2001; Julien 2002, 2005 on Norwegian DP structure).

Note that the structure strictly observes the proposed universal hierarchy (leaving out some phonologically empty heads, to keep the tree small). I have represented the demonstrative as a head here, but nothing hinges on this. A pair of phrasal movements ensures that the suffixal Pl and Def (Art) heads are adjacent to N and Pl, respectively, which I take to be the essence of cluster formation (as argued in Svenonius 2007).

Icelandic provides an argument for movement of this type, as an overt demonstrative is in complementary distribution with a suffixal article, and the choice leads to word order differences. An overt demonstrative appears in the base Dem–Num–Adj–N order, as in Norwegian but with no definite suffix, while a definite noun phrase with no demonstrative shows the order Adj–N– Num (SigurDsson 1992; Vangsnes 1999).

This is what would be expected if Pl attracts a large constituent, for checking of the N under adjacency, and Def attracts a relatively small constituent, perhaps even the PlP itself, as illustrated in (6). The fact that the movement (as identified by the reordering of the numeral) only occurs in the presence of the definite suffix suggests that the suffixal head is involved in triggering the movement.

Prefixal plural morphology would involve movement of NP (or nP) to a position just below the plural morpheme. All else being equal, a noun with prefixal plural morphology should tend to precede adjectives, which would be crossed by the moving NP. Typological data supports this: of 104 languages listed in Haspelmath et al. (2005) as having prefixal plural marking, 80 have NA order, and only 18 have AN order (another 6 are listed as having no dominant order of N and A). This means that 80 percent of plural-prefixing languages are NA, whereas among plural-suffixing languages, the distribution is much more even (190 are AN and 204 are NA; there are 37 with no dominant order of N and A).

As Cinque (2005) argues, the attested word orders are generally those expected from a movement analysis.