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We present a new experimental paradigm for investigating lexical expressions that convey different strengths of speaker commitment. Specifically, we compare different evidential contexts for using modal devices, epistemic discourse particles, and statements with no evidential markers at all, examining the extent to which listeners' interpretations of certain types of evidential words and their judgments about speaker commitment differ in strength. We also probe speakers' production preferences for these different devices under varying evidential circumstances. The results of our experiments shed new light on distinctions and controversies that play a key role in the current theoretical literature on the semantics and pragmatics of modals and discourse particles. Our paradigm thus contributes to a domain of experimental research on evidential expressions that is only just taking shape at the crossroads of theoretical semantics/pragmatics and psycholinguistics; we provide a potential starting point for approaching theoretical debates on the nature of modal evidential expressions from an experimental and context-oriented perspective.

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In this paper, we introduce the issue of adjective order and show that different approaches vary in their answers to the question of how fine-grained the semantic categories determining adjective order are. We report on a corpus study that we conducted and that illustrates that a clear answer to the question of what general factors exactly determine adjective order is elusive, given the multifactorial nature of the problem. We then present the individual contributions to this special issue, and how they attempt to add new observations from Germanic languages to the general issues revolving around the topic of adjective order.1 General issues in the study of adjective orderThe issue of adjective order has a long history in linguistics. As early as in 1933, Bloomfield remarked on the robust pattern of size adjectives usually preceding color adjectives (a small black dog vs. a black small dog). Following these early notes, many researchers in linguistic theory investigated adjective order in the form of semantic hierarchies (Dixon 1982;Bache and Davidsen-Nielsen 1997). In addition, early psychological studies explored how frequent co-occurrence between an adjective and a noun may contribute to them becoming fixed expressions, with fixed orders (see Martin 1969 et seq.). Other cognitive studies elaborate on the notion of 'apparentness', where an adjective denoting a cognitively apparent quality requires fewer computations in order to be processed than an adjective