The word order of a sentence is shaped by multiple principles. The principle
of syntactic dependency distance minimization is in conflict with the principle
of surprisal minimization (or predictability maximization) in single head
syntactic dependency structures: while the former predicts that the head should
be placed at the center of the linear arrangement, the latter predicts that the
head should be placed at one of the ends (either first or last). A critical
question is when surprisal minimization (or predictability maximization) should
surpass syntactic dependency distance minimization. In the context of single
head structures, it has been predicted that this is more likely to happen when
two conditions are met, i.e. (a) fewer words are involved and (b) words are
shorter. Here we test the prediction on the noun phrase when its composed of a
demonstrative, a numeral, an adjective and a noun. We find that, across
preferred orders in languages, the noun tends to be placed at one of the ends,
confirming the theoretical prediction. We also show evidence of anti locality
effects: syntactic dependency distances in preferred orders are longer than
expected by chance.

词序受多个原则影响，句法依赖距离最小化原则与预测性最大化原则在单头句法依赖结构中产生冲突，当涉及到名词短语时，确认通过语言的首选顺序进行测试，名词倾向于位于首尾位置，并表现出反定域效应：首选顺序中的句法依赖距离较长。