This thesis reports about two studies on what the preferred order of stacked adjectives is in noun phrases, according to native speakers of English and Dutch. Recent theoretical research on this...Show moreThis thesis reports about two studies on what the preferred order of stacked adjectives is in noun phrases, according to native speakers of English and Dutch. Recent theoretical research on this topic (Scott 2002, Truswell 2004, 2009, Szendrői 2010, 2013) use this domain of investigation as a basis for theoretical claims concerning the nature of adjectives (being specifiers vs. adjuncts) and NP-internal displacement, but they seriously lack when it comes to reporting about native speaker consultation about the data. This thesis aims to fill this gap by presenting the results of two online questionnaire studies of adjectival ordering, specifically testing the proposals above against native speaker judgements in two contexts: noun phrases with neutral orders and those with contrastive contexts. The results predominantly validate the findings of Truswell (2004, 2009) as opposed to those of Scott (2002) when it comes to neutral orders, and the claims of Szendrői (2010, 2013) as opposed to Truswell (2005) when it comes to contrastive orders. This in turn suggests that (i) adjectives should not be thought of as specifiers but rather as adjuncts, and (ii) some types of A-bar displacement in noun phrases are optional.Show less