Submitted by AbleReporter565 t3_10pkxtj in explainlikeimfive
Even though saying "the big brown brick wall" means the same as saying "the brick brown big wall", the second feels so very wrong.
Comments
remarkablemayonaise t1_j6m0hll wrote
It's a good start, but misses the "big, bad wolf" effect that breaks the rule. ("i" before "a" or "o" for like sounding words) and the "Polyanna Principle" of putting positive or neutral words before negative words. There are a few more as well. Language rules are made to be broken and refined after all.
tyler1128 t1_j6p842h wrote
That's actually quite interesting. I don't feel like I ever really learned about adjective order, or at least I don't remember it, but it's just intuition. "the brick brown big wall" to me seems to infer that brick brown is a color of the wall, and "the brick, brown big wall" seems like a weird way of saying the wall is of bricks and the bricks are brown, but I couldn't even give a inkling on why I feel that way.
remarkablemayonaise t1_j6pcypo wrote
Teaching English as a foreign language relies on more than being able to speak English for this reason. Knowing the difference between "I've been painting the house" and "I've painted the house" is okay, but why isn't it, "I've been knowing my friend for five years"? English is a quirky language and it's quirks are fairly different from most other European languages.
tyler1128 t1_j6pgba5 wrote
I've heard English described as a weird, messy amalgam of a germanic language with strong romance language influence being thrown in later, especially French. The closest sibling, Frisian, was described as English if it evolved without the large romance language influence on English.
malenkylizards t1_j6lvctw wrote
I feel like this needs vetting. From what I can tell this assertion has been attributed to like one source and from there passed around like it's fact. My gut tells me this is one of those things like "i before e," with tons of exceptions, ambiguities, and variation, but I admit i don't have the research.
captainAwesomePants t1_j6lw2s1 wrote
I suppose the easiest way to demonstrate that would be to come up with a counterexample, but I can't think of one.
malenkylizards t1_j6lwf78 wrote
One I saw earlier was "ugly, yella, no-good keister," which sandwiches color between two opinions.
Skiptree t1_j6lwmm4 wrote
Doesn’t quite work however because “yella” in this case is really saying coward, right?
malenkylizards t1_j6ly4pl wrote
Well, a lot of these things are really opinions, or colored by your feelings about them. If I call my dog a sweet little old girl, does it sound wronger if it's an 80 pound puppy GSD with an "old soul"?
But suppose you're right and we disallow anything outside of the opinion category, unless it can be shown to be objectively true. What if my keister was purple, because of the color of my pants? No opinion there. Ugly purple no-good keister sounds about as right or slightly better than ugly no-good purple keister.
I agree that the rule seems plausible because lots of parts of it work, and lots of examples of things sounding right or wrong come to mind, but it seeming plausible doesn't mean it's true, if that makes sense. I would want to see statistics. I want to see someone say "we ran this corpus of 30,000 books through a computer, used this natural language processor to categorize every string of consecutive adjectives, and found that such and such percent of them fit the rule perfectly. The violations were mostly of so and so"
Tbh I'm probably not going to do it or look into it too much, I ain't got time, and I'm sure there's a grad student this would be perfect for. But without a more rigorous analysis, I'd hesitate to pass on the rule as if it were true.
nIBLIB t1_j6m0zw8 wrote
Yella isn’t a colour. It’s short for ‘yellow-bellied’ which means cowardly
Etherbeard t1_j6mbp82 wrote
Were you watching Home Alone?
Etherbeard t1_j6mbif3 wrote
Assertions attributed to one source are how English wound up with so many fake rules like those outlawing split infinitives, starting sentences with conjunctions, and ending them with prepositions.
Vampiric2010 t1_j6m07qe wrote
Isn't language full of assertions passed around as fact? Like how people incorrectly use the hard g for gif?
TheSlyMufasa t1_j6m0sio wrote
Them are fighting words.
Etherbeard t1_j6mbxqd wrote
This is absolutely true. For example, there are no rules in English barring the use of split infinitives, ending sentences in prepositions, or beginning them with conjunctions. These were all created by individuals who didn't like them stylistically. These rules percolated around and eventually got picked up by grammar-nazi school marms who drilled it into their students as though it were fact.
flyingbarnswallow t1_j6m2abu wrote
Yes and no. Much of what is taught in schools and passed around between laypeople as the so-called rules is simply incorrect. However, linguistics is a field with many scholars, who, as the scientists they are, observe, experiment on, and model language. There are lots of theoretical debates, especially because linguistics as it stands now is a fairly young field, but that doesn’t mean misinformation is all there is.
the1ine t1_j6ofqij wrote
Yes, because language has evolved (often in parallel) and is memetic. The whole thing is one big game of telephone. I believe this is why Stephen Wolfram is pushing to create a new form of language similar to maths that can be used to universally communicate anything. Because everything else is subject to history and context.
Dragongaze13 t1_j6mb6ps wrote
As a French speaker the order just "made sense" to me, as it does in French.
pro185 t1_j6mp6m0 wrote
Perhaps the most interesting part is this is a relatively high level priority ordering system that is (mostly) innately understood when learning the language as a child. Just by hearing others speak/seeing them write we program our brains to only accept one ordering of words as correct even though we were never formally taught this system.
Teupfleup t1_j6pa6wt wrote
The TLDR of that link: We don't know
corsicanguppy t1_j6m26lm wrote
Grammarly pluralizes 'e-mail' with an S. I can't trust it as an authority for anything after learning it got that wrong.
amazingmikeyc t1_j6mdg6v wrote
Sometimes e-mail is used like you'd use "mail" or "post" - "I wrote a lot of mail today"
But sometimes it's used like you'd use "letter" - "I wrote a lot of letters today"
Minuted t1_j6m4qxp wrote
Why would e-mails be wrong?
Unless you're talking about a single e-mail. I guess the plural of mail isn't mails but e-mail would be a different word. For example we say "I got an e-mail" rather than "I got a piece of e-mail", like we would for physical mail.
Weird discrepancy I suppose, but considering every other way we use the word e-mail, "e-mails" makes the most sense.
alexllew t1_j6m9hff wrote
I think it depends. I received a ton of e-mail sounds find to me, but I'm going to write 3 e-mail is definitely wrong. Something about whether you're using it as a discrete or bulk noun I guess.
sirreldar t1_j6maz26 wrote
I think the technical term is countable vs uncountable.
Same way we say "I drank so much (uncountable) water" but "I drank so many (countable) cups/bottles of water".
Or "I lift less (uncountable) weight. I lift fewer (countable) weights"
thisusedyet t1_j6nlwpv wrote
I think he means e's-mail :P
the1ine t1_j6ogvj1 wrote
I think there's just a word gap. When sending old school paper mail you can say all of the following;
there's a lot of mail today
has the mail arrived
mail me the details
--BUT you would typically not say
i sent two mails
--INSTEAD you'd likely say
i sent two letters
When we replace mail with e-mail we have also replaced letter with e-mail. So when I say:
i sent two e-mails
Anyone trying to reverse engineer the obvious rule would see that as synonymous with;
i sent two mails
Thus because there's not a 1-to-1 relationship between the 'old' and the 'new' many who are applying the old grammar will not accept the new method, which when you fill in the gaps (ie with e-mail=letter) is perfectly fine
figmentPez t1_j6lbj5k wrote
It feels wrong because it doesn't mean the same thing. Even though we aren't taught the adjective order, and there's even some debate over exactly what that order is, there still remains an implied difference in how the adjectives are being applied to the word.
One commonly cited order of adjectives is "Determiner, Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Color, Origin, Material, and Purpose." Since size usually comes before color, big seems out of place in your second phrasing, since it is not an origin, material, or purpose. There's also more ambiguity in your second example, since "brick" could be describing the shade of brown, instead of the material of the wall.
In other discussion of adjective order I've seen people use a "great green dragon" and a "green great dragon" used as example of how adjective order matters. In a fantasy world the first would be a large sized member of the green dragon species/breed, while the latter would be a green colored member of the great dragon species.
Dorocche t1_j6lp61y wrote
Yeah, I read the second sentence as meaning the wall is brick-brown. In this case, the order does carry meaning.
"The brown big brick wall" still sounds weird though, and I don't think it can be interpreted differently.
AceDecade t1_j6lqj8z wrote
A brown wall made of big bricks?
CreepyPhotographer t1_j6lvjiu wrote
I shitted a brown big brick this morning
Cayowin t1_j6meklq wrote
long as you didnt add it to the brown brick wall, you all good fam.
Captain-Griffen t1_j6mdx4v wrote
In spoken English, yes. In written English, that would be "brown, big-brick wall". Then again, it should be "The brown, big, brick wall" in written English to begin with.
[deleted] t1_j6mmmiz wrote
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foolishle t1_j6otspm wrote
I would read “The brown big brick wall” as being a wall made of big bricks that were brown.
I think what happens is that if the adjectives go out of order your brain re-parses the list and assumes that they’re out of order for a reason and that there’s some kind of nesting is going on. some things are modifying other adjectives (sometimes nouning them) rather than the base noun.
Like “the old big cat” makes me assume that we are assessing “big cats” and talking about the old one.
figmentPez t1_j6lra9p wrote
Well, if you really wanted to come up with a reason for that non-standard adjective order, it could be used to describe an average sized wall that is made of big bricks.
Captain-Griffen t1_j6mdzhl wrote
Putting the brown first puts the emphasis on brown. Imagine two big brick walls, one brown, one green. "The brown big brick wall" no longer sounds wrong.
czbz t1_j6ogub9 wrote
Right - but in the dragon example I don't think the second word in either phrase could be considered an adjective, if it's part of the name of the species.
Caucasiafro t1_j6l2j35 wrote
Adjective order matters in the same way that all other grammar rules matter. It's what we expect. And when those expectations are broken we tend to get scared and confused because it takes more work for our brain to interpret what we are hearing or what we are reading.
Adjective order is a pretty unique one though, most other grammar rules are broken pretty often in really informal settings. But something about adjective order makes us really not want to break that rule. At least in English, other languages might have much less strict adjective order rules.
[deleted] t1_j6lqf1e wrote
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Any-Broccoli-3911 t1_j6l7svh wrote
Adjective order is different than most grammar rules as it's rarely needed to distinguish 2 correct sentences.
For many grammar rules, if you don't follow them, it's still grammatically correct, it just means something else. For adjectives, unless your adjective means 2 different things that have a different position in the order, that doesn't happen.
Most languages don't have adjective order.
johndburger t1_j6ln2jn wrote
In fact most languages do, and the order is similar across languages.
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-030521-041835
This suggests that it’s not simply a matter of grammar, but is connected to something deeper in our mental models of the world.
AceDecade t1_j6lqd0i wrote
Can you name some grammar rules that produce grammatically correct, semantically incorrect statements when you misuse them?
For example “he are running” is not grammatically correct, nor is “he will run yesterday”. I can think of plenty of grammar rules that product grammatically incorrect sentences when not followed, so I’m a bit skeptical that there are many grammar rules that produce grammatically correct sentences when not followed
johndburger t1_j6mtj42 wrote
“He will run yesterday” is perfectly grammatical.
Too many people use “ungrammatical” to mean “this sentence just doesn’t sound right”. It has a much narrower meaning than that.
flyingbarnswallow t1_j6m2tnd wrote
There are a couple famous examples. Chomsky’s sentence that often gets used in intro linguistics textbooks is “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” It registers as syntactically correct, a perfectly valid sentence, as opposed to, say, “Sleep ideas green furiously colorless”, which is intuitively much worse. And yet, the syntactically correct sentence is semantically nonsensical. This tells us there must be a mechanism of syntax at least somewhat independent of semantics.
The second example I remember from intro linguistics (or maybe syntax) was the poem Jabberwocky. Almost all content words are nonsense words with no established English meaning. And yet, the sentences work. They read as sentences that should be possible in English. This is because they follow English grammatical rules.
dg313 t1_j6mfsgi wrote
Is it because in the first sentence, “sleep” functions as a verb? So the syntax is recognized as adjective (or adverb, depending on if it’s modifying green or ideas)-adjective-noun-verb-adverb? But in the second sentence, there isn’t a verb since sleep is acting as a modifier for ideas, so it’s adjective-noun-(misplaced) adjective-adverb-adjective so it isn’t recognized as a sentence?
flyingbarnswallow t1_j6opvgx wrote
Chomsky’s main idea is that while human language is produced linearly (that is, one word after another), it has a deep structure that is instead hierarchical. The full set of rules governing where different parts of speech can go in this hierarchy is waaaay too long for a Reddit comment (and I doubt I could explain it well since it’s been a few years since I really took syntax).
I believe the highest level in this sentence is a VP (Verb Phrase), although I think one might argue it’s a TP (Tensed Phrase) idk, I’m not a syntactician. A VP can take an internal argument (object, for English verbs), but isn’t required to, and in this case it doesn’t, since sleep is an intransitive verb. Embedded in that VP, as in all VPs, is an external argument, in this case the NP (Noun Phrase) “colorless green ideas”, and a V’ (read as “V bar”). The V’ itself contains the V “sleep” and the AP (Adjunct Phrase) “furiously”.
There’s more analysis to be done on this sentence (going into the NP and its adjuncts), but I’ll spare you. The point I’m trying to make is that rules govern the syntax of languages, but these rules are, under Chomsky’s original proposition, unrelated to semantics. He argued it is entirely possible for a sentence to be syntactically grammatical and semantically meaningless, which I think is well-evidenced by the fact that there are some meaningless sentences that seem like English and some that don’t.
Later linguists working with later models have challenged the strict hierarchy of this theory (called the Minimalist Program), and have also challenged its total separation of syntax and semantics.
The other point I should have made clearer in my first comment is that most people use “grammar rules” differently from how linguists use the term, including, I think, the person I was replying to. Linguists are scientists, and therefore take a descriptive view of language. We model what we observe. If our rules don’t conform to how people actually speak, it is we who are wrong, not the speakers, just like how a physicist’s model of particle behavior must be wrong if it doesn’t accurately product how a particle acts. This disqualifies almost all the grammar rules you learned in school. Things like “you can’t say ‘me and my dad went to the store’” or “you can’t end a sentence with a preposition” are obviously wrong, because people do it all the time. If those actually produced sentences universally judged by our mental grammar to be unacceptable, then people wouldn’t do them. The job of syntacticians is not to impose arbitrary rules like these, but instead to discover the actual, implicitly understood rules governing how all real human beings speak, not just those who have been taught to speak in a certain educated register.
ad-lapidem t1_j6msw78 wrote
"He will run yesterday" is perfectly grammatically correct, it's just semantically nonsense. For that matter, "he are running" (or "he be running," etc.) may not be acceptable in standard Englishes, but might be preferred or at least unexceptional in certain dialects.
AceDecade t1_j6nh902 wrote
“He will run yesterday” is grammatically correct? Grammatically speaking then, is this sentence future tense or past tense?
Is it grammatically correct for one clause to have two different tenses?
This isn’t merely semantically incorrect because it suggests the use of time travel, it’s grammatically incorrect because the verb is just conjugated incorrectly for the tense of the sentence.
As for your other examples, certain dialects have different grammar rules, but they’re still rules. Breaking grammar rules doesn’t usually produce sentences that are still grammatically correct but semantically different in this case either.
FormulaDriven t1_j6nsi13 wrote
"He will run yesterday" is future tense because the verb formation is the one for the future tense (will + INFINITIVE). "Yesterday" is not part of the tense. In meaning, the "yesterday" contradicts the tense but that's not a grammatical observation.
Teupfleup t1_j6pbpe5 wrote
>This isn’t merely semantically incorrect because it suggests the use of time travel, it’s grammatically incorrect because the verb is just conjugated incorrectly for the tense of the sentence.
No, it's not. The point in "will run yesterday" and "sleep furiously" is actually exactly the same: Grammatically correct, semantically nonsensical. The effect of "yesterday" really isn't any different from "furiously" here, as it does not influence the grammatical tense. They are just adverbs that add meaning that is nonsensical. They're just sitting there in their correct grammatical positions. There really is nothing wrong with the conjugation of the verbs - It would be wrong it if it was "will ran", for example.
ad-lapidem t1_j6o40pr wrote
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously, more famously.
AceDecade t1_j6o4l68 wrote
What grammar rule does this sentence break? Isn't it grammatically correct, semantically nonsense?
ad-lapidem t1_j6o4x00 wrote
It doesn't; that's the point I'm making. You can form a sentence which parses into grammatical English but which doesn't communicate any useful information. Grammar is not the only thing that determines whether something is good English or not.
AceDecade t1_j6o519k wrote
I've never suggested otherwise. You claimed there were many grammar rules which produce grammatically correct sentences when broken. I'm asking which rules those are.
ad-lapidem t1_j6ohiva wrote
Where do I claim this? I simply point out that "He will run yesterday" is grammatically correct even if it does not make sense. It follows all the rules of standard English grammar. You would presumably not object to the sentence "She will jog tomorrow" which is identical in grammatical structure and equally grammatically correct in standard English. But grammar, again, is not the sole determiner of what makes something acceptable English.
AceDecade t1_j6oigxd wrote
Sorry, I was confusing you with the commenter above who made the claim I'm referencing. I was curious about grammar rules that, when you break the rule, you still end up with a grammatically correct sentence that means something different from what you may have intended.
I'm still not sure why you referenced "colorless green ideas sleep furiously". It's a grammatically correct, semantically meaningless sentence but it doesn't appear to break any grammar rules, which is what I was originally asking for.
Any-Broccoli-3911 t1_j6moz9c wrote
"He is running", " he was running", "he will run", and "he ran" all mean something different but are grammatically correct. That grammar rule is essential to the meaning of the sentence, in this case, the tense.
AceDecade t1_j6ncaj4 wrote
I agree. All four of the sentences you provided are grammatically correct and follow the grammar rule that the verb is conjugated to match the subject. What grammar rule has been “broken” that you would say actually produces a different, yet still grammatically correct sentenc?
czbz t1_j6ojf49 wrote
What about the subject-verb-object order rule? I can say "Sam reads Reddit", or I can switch the subject and object and say "Reddit reads Sam". Breaking the rule didn't make an ungrammatical sentence, it made one with different meaning.
AceDecade t1_j6ol10r wrote
Ah I see, in this example the rule is "broken" because we know that "Sam" is the subject, but it can be interpreted as a grammatically correct, semantically meaningless sentence where "Reddit" is the subject instead.
I guess that makes sense, but I wouldn't say that both the grammar rule has been broken AND the result is a grammatically correct sentence; rather, it's one or the other. Either the grammar rule has been broken because the subject is in the wrong place, or the grammar rule has not been broken but the subject is such that the sentence becomes meaningless.
czbz t1_j6om9o0 wrote
I wouldn't say "Reddit reads Sam" is semantically meaningless. It can mean the Reddit community forms an understanding of who Sam is, or just that they read words Sam wrote, depending on context.
I would say the rule has been broken if the speaker intended to communicate that Sam was the one reading but they said the words in the wrong order, perhaps because they didn't know English grammar well. It's a particularly bad mistake because it may lead to a misunderstanding.
czbz t1_j6oihlg wrote
> most other grammar rules are broken pretty often in really informal settings
I don't think this is true. There are lots of grammar rules that are followed in any setting. They have to be because they're a big part of how we make ourselves understood. Generally if people don't want to be understood they don't bother speaking at all.
The grammar rules people like to talk about for fun are the ones that are frequently broken, and may even be fake rules that were just made up to give grammarians something to write about.
Real rules that everyone follows are taught to language learners but are not very entertaining for people who already speak the language - like the rule that singular improper nouns must have an article or other determiner, but determiners are optional for plurals and proper nouns. Or the rule that verbs must be inflected for past tense.
I think adjective order is distinctive in being a rule that feels surprising even to native speakers - we imagine we have a free choice and then enjoy learning that we've been following a complex seeming rule that we didn't even know existed.
Teupfleup t1_j6pakg2 wrote
This is different from grammar rules. Because this is not a grammar rule - at least, not one that we discovered yet. We just don't know why they have to be in this order.
And in fact, as for breaking rules: It's the other way around. Grammar rules can't be broken or they'd produce ungrammatical gibberish. But this adjective pattern is kind of a soft, fuzzy "rule" that does have a bit of flexibility some of the time.
SaukPuhpet t1_j6lbw6w wrote
In English adjectives follow the order of:
Opinion
Size
Age
Shape
Color
Place of origin
Material
Purpose
"The big(size) brown(color) brick(material) wall"
To expand this and use all of them you have:
"The ugly big old crooked brown french brick dividing wall"
Changing the order of theses adjectives makes it feel "wrong" because after years of hearing adjectives in this order you have internalized it, even if you are not consciously aware of the order.
This rule of grammar is called Ablaut Reduplication.
EDIT: I goofed it is not called this. It may not have a name.
Durris t1_j6lsw8t wrote
Ablaut reduplication is the pattern of vowels in song song phrases or sounds like tic-tac-toe. You are describing something else, though I don't know the name, or if it even has one, for that rule.
highwaistedpants4evr t1_j6ltmwu wrote
Another great example: “Hey, I'm gonna give you to the count of ten, to get your ugly, yella, no-good keister off my property, before I pump your guts full of lead!”
malenkylizards t1_j6lvz0k wrote
But...that example breaks the alleged rule. Ugly and no good are both opinions, yella is a color. If the rule really worked without exception, this would sound wrong and strange to us, but "ugly, no-good, yella keister" would sound normal. I'd say the opposite is true, the one following the rules sounds a tiny bit worse but is also pretty much fine.
redhedinsanity t1_j6lyo7q wrote
"yella" (yellow) is an old-time slang word for "cowardly" (short for "yellow-bellied"), in this case it's not actually describing the color, so it does fit since it's 3 opinions about the person's character.
Teupfleup t1_j6pcu71 wrote
Useful addition but not a rule or answer to the actual question. It's basically a systematic reiteration of the question. The rules that produce this pattern are AFAIK still to a large extend unknown.
Except for the latter two, that is: "Material" and "Purpose". These are actually quite easy to explain. What is called "purpose" here refers to simply compound heads that would form 1 word in other Germanic languages spelling, so obviously it comes closest to the noun. And "material" is a genitive that doesn't tolerate adjectives between it and its noun. "The wooden big table" is ungrammatical in a way pretty similar to "The table I saw of wood" is.
homarjr t1_j6lge7z wrote
"the brick brown big wall" would have a different meaning.
It makes it sound like "brick brown" is a type of colour.
And then "big wall" is sounds like something different than just a "wall", it's its own noun.
The strict order you would normally put these words actually allows us to have more flexibility in the words you use. For example, having a colour called "brick brown" is made possible. If we allowed any random order to describe things, that couldn't happen.
dr_xenon t1_j6l1o8o wrote
It’s just how each language has its own nuances. In Spanish, the adjectives come after the nouns.
A long time ago, someone decided to do it that way. Everyone else agreed that was pretty good and they kept doing it. That’s how language works.
Me and Joe went to the park means basically the same as Joe and I went to the park, but only one is correct.
AbleReporter565 OP t1_j6l1rre wrote
Only one is correct?!
Caucasiafro t1_j6l29sz wrote
Yes "me" is for when you are a object of a sentence (the thing being acted on) "I" is for when you are the subject of the sentence (the thing doing the action)
Like
I hit the ball. (correct, because you are the subject)
The ball hit me. (correct, because you are the object)
Me hit the ball (incorrect)
AbleReporter565 OP t1_j6l2p9i wrote
Took me a few reads but that actually makes sense, thanks
breckenridgeback t1_j6l5mtm wrote
If you ever learn a foreign language, this is an example of grammatical case, which English usually doesn't mark (pronouns are the exception to that rule), but which a lot of other languages do on all nouns.
neverfarts t1_j6la2gm wrote
Like in German, which has 3 genders (Grammatically speaking) and 4 cases. Each gender has its own version of 'a' and 'the' and these decline according to case, resulting in many possible combinations.
Bonus: the female Form is written as male in certain cases, just to keep you on your toes.
Caucasiafro t1_j6lkx1t wrote
German cases and genders are so weird. For me the fact that die is both nominative and accusative feminine is the most confusing part. Somehow neuter staying as das makes mir sense.
darrellbear t1_j6ldbpy wrote
Also, put others before yourself--it's not "Me and my friends went to the movies", it's "My friends and I went to the movies".
f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4 t1_j6lysdy wrote
Easy to remember that if you're using the correct form, it still makes sense when it's split up.
My friends went to the movies.
I went to the movies.
Me went to the movies. 🤪
thisusedyet t1_j6nm74v wrote
>Me went to the movies
Yarp
breckenridgeback t1_j6l5km0 wrote
Strictly speaking yes, since "Joe and I" is the subject of the verb "went", "I" is correct (and English word order demands "Joe and I" and not "I and Joe").
"Me and Joe" is still very common in casual English speech, though.
Aspy343 t1_j6le4cr wrote
There's a super simple way of checking this, and that's to just say the sentence without the other person.
"Me and Joe went to the park" becomes "Me went to the park", which clearly sounds wrong.
"Joe and I went to the park" becomes "I went to the park", which clearly sounds right.
A lot of people think "Come upstairs with John and I" sounds right because of the "I" but when you remove the other person it becomes "Come upstairs with I", which is clearly wrong, so it should be "Come upstairs with me".
czbz t1_j6oleer wrote
CGEL says it's not quite that simple. The sentence does have the other person and we can't necessarily ignore that fact. "Keep Tom and I updated" is not necessarily incorrect.
Captain-Griffen t1_j6mejha wrote
> Me and Joe went to the park means basically the same as Joe and I went to the park, but only one is correct.
"Me" is an object not a subject. They don't mean the same thing, but "me went to the park" is meaningless so people will still understand what you mean.
Musichord t1_j6ldney wrote
I think it might have something to do with what is described. Using your example, I read the first as a big wall, that is the colour brown, made of brick. The second one, I read a big wall, of brick brown colour (brick describing the colour) They provide different info- on the second sentence, I lost the info that the wall is actually made of brick.
patniemeyer t1_j6lkjky wrote
Adjectives are descriptive words that can combine in numerous and ambiguous ways. "brick brown" could be interpreted as a color description and not actually implying brick as a material at all. A lot of the ordering we have internalized is probably about disambiguation.
john5-2 t1_j6lp9tp wrote
Think of it like adding parentheses in math.
Big (brown (brick wall))
Words to the left are things that fit into what's to their right.
A "brick wall" is a kind of wall. Brown is then a kind of brick wall. Big is a kind of brown brick wall.
That's the best I can do, but trust me, it makes sense.
stargatedalek2 t1_j6ly8j6 wrote
It's a trick example. "Brick" seems like an adjective here, but "brick wall" is itself functioning as a two part noun. Kind of like how "Buckingham Palace" would be a noun.
suedehelpme t1_j6mn1hj wrote
This is a bad example, yes. Brick wall is essentially lexicalized at this point. It's stored in the brain as a single entity denoting a specific thing. This is like asking why you can say a big bluebird, and not a blue big bird.
czbz t1_j6ok97r wrote
Even if it wasn't lexicalized, brick still wouldn't be an adjective, would it? I could pile up tomatoes (although they might have to be in tins) and have a tomato wall. That wouldn't make tomato an adjective. I think it's a noun adjunct.
suedehelpme t1_j6ox9cy wrote
It doesn't really matter whether we call it an adjective or not. The point is that brick and wall co-occur so much, that we register it as a single entry in our mental dictionary. We wouldn't typically call a wall made of concrete bricks or Lego bricks a "brick wall", meaning that the term refers to something distinct from "a wall that's made of bricks". The intonation of "brick wall" is also distinct from "tomato wall", since the latter is pronounced with a rise on tomato. That's pretty good evidence of whether or not something has essentially become a fused expression. Compare how you'd pronounce "cheese dip" and "cheese shoes".
czbz t1_j6oz1j3 wrote
Interesting, thanks. Hadn't noticed the tone difference before.
Cannie_Flippington t1_j6o2hgu wrote
Someone wrote a book about it in 2013.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cra0akxWEAA1IAg.jpg
>adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a loverly little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you'll sound like a maniac. It's an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out. And as size comes before colour, green great dragons can't exist.
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tsme-esr t1_j6l4wgl wrote
It often doesn't, but people who don't say adjectives in the common English order basically reveal themselves to not be native English speakers
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bradles0 t1_j6lp83v wrote
since you can use adjectives to modify other adjectives, the order clarifies what each adjective is referring to.
e.g a brown brick wall is a wall that is brown colored and made of bricks. a brick brown wall is a wall that brick brown colored and of indeterminate material.
While most of these are actually not a problem, for example the big is still unambiguous, it still sounds wrong because you expect another adjective that the big is modifying, not a noun.
kynthrus t1_j6lr9e7 wrote
So those sentences actually don't mean the same thing technically. The image they portray to a native speaker is different.
To simplify it. A big brown brick wall is exactly as it sounds a large wall of bricks that is brown.
A brown brick big wall is a wall made of brown bricks and it's big.
A brick big brown wall is a brown wall that seems to be as big a single brick.
1029394756abc t1_j6lzois wrote
I find it fascinating that native speakers don’t learn this but it comes instinctually. Second language learners find this (understandably!) very difficult and it’s hard for me to help them learn this because I can’t describe “the why” either!
Lachtaube t1_j6m22sv wrote
First of all, punctuation is really important. You’re going to get different answers with different punctuation, so please use your commas correctly. To answer your question/EKY5, adjectives make objects more easily understood. Ordering them from ‘more vague’ to ‘more specific’ directs understanding in a clear way our brains can relate to, from vague descriptors with a lot of other additional possibilities, to more specific and precise ones that make the object described more unique. To get to the specific descriptors, we need to get any necessary vague descriptors out of the way, and not double back to them after picking up a slightly more specific descriptor. “The big, brown, brick wall” is less mentally exhausting than “The brick, brown, big wall” because in the second example, we’ve started with something very specific and ended with something very vague. We may as well have just stopped at “The brick wall,” which is more accurate because it is more specific. “Brown” and “big” have become filler words or unnecessary noise.
MistahBoweh t1_j6m6kzv wrote
English has this thing called adjective order, which might not technically matter in a lot of cases, but will still sound wrong. Other times, it changes the meaning. In situations like this one, the order doesn’t really change the meaning but it does help the recipient understand the meaning.
In this case, you put the material (brick) before the color (brown). Only, the color describes both the material and the wall, so the color comes first. In a similar fashion, despite (big) referring to the size of the wall, it also gives insight into the size or quantity of the materials used, so it comes before the material. The result, ‘the big brown brick wall,’ is the only way to arrange these adjectives because for the reader, each adjective helps to clarify the next.
A brick wall is a wall of bricks. A brown brick wall is a wall made of brown bricks. A big brown brick wall is a wall made of a lot of brown bricks. Presented like this might help you see why, in this example, the right order helps reading comprehension.
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Downtown_Manner2013 t1_j6mwt6a wrote
It’s impossible to teach, impossible to learn, intuitive to know. I’ve learned 2 and a bit foreign languages and you occasionally encounter these things.
No-Fox5504 t1_j6okhx2 wrote
I was a TEFL/Academic English teacher for 5 years. Grammar is a set of generalisations rather than rules that matter, some with looser and with more irregular forms than others. Adjective order is more collocation (sounds natural to native speakers) than hard and fast rules than might be found elsewhere.
No-Fox5504 t1_j6okjj3 wrote
I was a TEFL/Academic English teacher for 5 years. Grammar is a set of generalisations rather than 'rules', some with looser and with more irregular forms than others. Adjective order is more collocation (sounds natural to native speakers) than consistent generalizations that might be found elsewhere.
sstrombe t1_j6l5s73 wrote
In case anyone wants to learn more about the “correct” adjective order (which most native English speakers use reflexively), this Grammarly write up explains it pretty clearly