ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of adjective placement in second language acquisition (SLA), drawing heavily from studies examining English and Romance languages, particularly Spanish. Adjectives modify nouns and, therefore, pertain to the nominal domain; crosslinguistically, languages allow either prenominal adjectives, as in English, or both prenominal and postnominal adjectives, as in many Romance languages like Spanish. To account for this distribution, contemporary syntactic and semantic proposals are evaluated. Given that adjective placement involves both (morpho)syntactic and semantic features, this particular property has provided a rich testing ground for various questions pertaining to SLA, third language acquisition, heritage speakers, and bilingualism. While important findings from these domains of inquiry are included herein, this chapter emphasizes the insights revealed in SLA studies regarding the acquisition of (morpho)syntax-semantics in the nominal domain. Specifically, many studies show that SLA learners demonstrate knowledge of interpretive constraints assumed to fall out from the syntax of adjectives, providing robust evidence that target-like acquisition is possible. Typical experimental methods used to tap learners’ knowledge of adjective placement are described, and recommendations that stand to increase the field's knowledge of the factors constraining adjective placement in future studies are offered.
