prenominal

As a non-linguist I probably misunderstand the meaning of prenominal genitive and might be missing your argument's point.

In case anybody's interested, one of our (former) graduate students has done some really fascinating work on computational analysis of prenominal modifiers (adjectives, etc.).

As an example, there are languages where prenominal genitives are impossible (0).

Semi-Supervised Modeling for Prenominal Modifier Ordering.

Interesting conclusion from the paper: [...] for ordering prenominal modifiers, [...] a simple n-gram model outperforms position-specific models This seems to imply that adjective order can be better described with common phrases rather than a set of definite grammar rules.

Furthermore, most of the actual properties of the Pirahã constructions discussed by Everett (for example, the ban on prenominal possessor recursion and the behavior of WH-constructions) are familiar from languages whose speakers lack the cultural restrictions attributed to the Pirahã.

Then, there are languages, such as German, where only one prenominal genitive is possible (1): > Annas Haus > *Annas Hunds Haus Finally, there are languages, such as English, where an infinite number of prenominal genitives are possible (infinity).

As a German speaker, the claim "more than one prenominal genitive is impossible" seems interesting but perhaps not entirely accurate.