Grammatical hierarchies and implicational universals

In §3.3, we observed that the implicational universals for noun–adjective order were all of the form ‘X ⊃ NA’, and that this pattern of implicational universals represents the phenomenon of dominance of NA order. There is another even more frequent pattern found in implicational universals, which is taken to represent another type of deeper phenomenon, a grammatical hierarchy.

If one examines languages with prepositions, the following pattern in implicational universals for noun modifiers are found (Hawkins 1983:75; Dryer 1992b):

1. (1) Prep ⊃:

2. (1a) NNum ⊃ NDem

3. (1b) NDem ⊃ NA

4. (1c) NA ⊃ NG

5. (1d) NG ⊃ NRel

The series of implicational universals in 1a–d represents a chain in which the implicatum of each universal is the implicans of the subsequent universal in the list. This pattern leads to a sequence of grammatical types ranked by their position in the chain of implicational universals. This sequence is called a grammatical hierarchy. Hawkins christened this particular hierarchy the Prepositional Noun Modifier Hierarchy, represented as follows (the > symbol is oriented in the same direction as the implication ⊃ in 1a–d):

1. (2) Prepositional Noun Modifier Hierarchy: NNum > NDem > NA > NG > NRel

The chain of implicational universals in 1a–d can be reformulated to make direct reference to the Prepositional Noun Modifier Hierarchy in 2:

1. (3) If a modifier–noun order on the Prepositional Noun Modifier Hierarchy occurs in a prepositional language, then any order to the right also occurs in the language. If the opposite order to one on the Prepositional Noun Modifier Hierarchy occurs in a prepositional language, then any order to the left also occurs in the language.