Word Order Variation in Lebanese Arabic DPs: In Support of Low Numerals

1 Background

Refining Greenberg’s (1963) Universal 20, Cinque (2005) and Dryer (2009) show that the typological distribution of the order of the four elements Demonstrative, Numeral, Adjective, and Noun is extremely uneven. There are 24 possible permutations of these elements, but only 5 of them constitute the dominant orders across languages (1i). Another 9 orders are attested, but are less frequent (1ii). The final 10 word orders are either unattested or extremely rare, accounting altogether for less than 1% of languages (1iii).

1. (1).

   1. i.

      1. a. N-A-Num-Dem

      2. b. Dem-Num-A-N

      3. c. Num-N-A-Dem

      4. d. Dem-N-A-Num

      5. e. Dem-Num-N-A

   2. ii.

      1. a. N-A-Dem-Num

      2. b. N-Dem-Num-A

      3. c. Num-A-N-Dem

      4. d. Dem-A-N-Num

      5. e. Dem-N-Num-A

      6. f. N-Num-A-Dem

      7. g. N-Dem-A-Num

      8. h. A-N-Num-Dem

      9. i. A-N-Dem-Num

   3. iii.

      1. a. Num-N-Dem-A

      2. b. Dem-A-Num-N

      3. c. Num-Dem-A-N

      4. d. N-Num-Dem-A

      5. e. Num-Dem-N-A

      6. f. A-Dem-Num-N

      7. g. A-Dem-N-Num

      8. h. Num-A-Dem-N

      9. i. A-Num-Dem-N

      10. j. A-Num-N-Dem

Cinque’s syntactic account of these generalizations is based on the assumption that the base order is as shown in (2), and on a constraint on movement.

1. (2).

   1. a. [_WP Dem [_XP Num [_YP Adj [_NP N]]]]

   2. b. Cinque’s Constraint

      Only movement of the overt NP and phrases containing it is allowed, with different movements having different costs.

In this proposal, neither head movement nor the movement of any constituent that does not contain the NP is allowed. Different types of permitted movements are assigned different costs, expressed as degrees of markedness. Roll-up movement with pied-piping, like (3a), is unmarked. So if NP moves above Adj, then the [_YP [_NP N] Adj t_NP] moves above Num, and so on, yielding a full mirror order, there is no cost to the computational system. If, on the other hand, the NP moves all the way up to a higher specifier without pied-piping, as in (3b), the movement is somewhat marked, so word orders requiring this movement will be less frequent. Moving an XP containing the NP, but without moving the NP up to XP’s specifier first, as in (3c), is more marked, so word orders requiring it are even less frequent. Finally, splitting the NP out of a moved constituent and moving it to a higher position as in (3d) is highly marked, so word orders requiring it will be infrequent.

1. (3).

   1. a. [_WP [_NP [_NP [_NP N]₁ Adj t₁]₂ Num t₂]₃ Dem t₃]    Unmarked

   2. b. [_WP [_NP N]₁ Dem [_XP Num [_YP Adj t₁]]]         Marked

   3. c. [_WP [_YP Adj [_NP N]]₁ Dem [_XP Num t₁]]        Very marked

   4. d.

Word orders requiring any other type of movement—namely, head movement or movement of a phrase not containing the overt NP—are underivable, so they are expected to be completely unattested. Typo-logically, that expectation is verified (Cinque 2005).

2 Examining Intralinguistic Variation: Lebanese Arabic

While Cinque’s proposal is only intended to explain the typological generalization, we test the ability of this proposal to predict the grammaticality of the 24 possible permutations of Demonstrative, Numeral, Adjective, and Noun in the DP in Lebanese Arabic. As it turns out, 11 of these 24 orders are grammatical in Lebanese Arabic, when tested using nonintersective adjectives, and 13 are ungrammatical (see the online appendix at http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:86360).

We start with the ungrammatical orders. Of the 13 ungrammatical orders, 8 require moving a phrase not containing the NP and are therefore correctly predicted to be ungrammatical. These are listed in (4).

1. (4).

   1. a. Dem-A-Num-N

   2. b. Num-Dem-A-N

   3. c. Num-Dem-N-A

   4. d. A-Dem-Num-N

   5. e. A-Dem-N-Num

   6. f. Num-A-Dem-N

   7. g. A-Num-Dem-N

   8. h...