  Languages vary in their placement of multiple adjectives before, after, or
surrounding the noun, but they typically exhibit strong intra-language
tendencies on the relative order of those adjectives (e.g., the preference for
`big blue box' in English, `grande bo\^{i}te bleue' in French, and
`alsund\={u}q al'azraq alkab\={\i}r' in Arabic). We advance a new quantitative
account of adjective order across typologically-distinct languages based on
maximizing information gain. Our model addresses the left-right asymmetry of
French-type ANA sequences with the same approach as AAN and NAA orderings,
without appeal to other mechanisms. We find that, across 32 languages, the
preferred order of adjectives largely mirrors an efficient algorithm of
maximizing information gain.
