Mandarin has subjectivity-based adjective ordering preferences in the presence of de

Abstract

We investigate adjective ordering preferences in Mandarin, a language that has been claimed to have English-like preferences, but only in the absence of the linking particle de (Sproat & Shih 1991). Extending the experimental methodology of Scontras et al. (2017), we find evidence of robust adjective ordering preferences in Mandarin when de is present. Moreover, the Mandarin preferences are predicted by adjective subjectivity, as in English and other unrelated languages.