Re: off topic: Gramm[a!]r Question

[Carl Distefano cld@xxxxxxxx]

Reply to note from Caballero  Mon, 23
May 2005 18:03:58 -0600 (MDT)

> "The big green door..." is a matter of convention, and you'd
> need to have recourse to scholarly work on English syntax (by
> linguists like Chomsky or Algeo, rather than stylists like
> Fowler or Bernstein) to get an answer as to whether some
> "rules" underlying that convention have been deduced.

Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, et al., devote several sections to
this and related questions in their endlessly fascinating
descriptive opus, "A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language"
(Longman, 1985). They say that the ordering of adjectives is
determined by which of four "zones" they fall into: (I) Precentral:
"peripheral, nongradable" adjectives, including emphasizers,
amplifiers and downtoners (e.g., certain, definite, sheer, complete,
slight); (II) Central: the "most adjectival items", which satisfy
all four criteria for adjective status (defined elsewhere); (III)
Postcentral: participals and color adjectives; and (IV) Prehead: the
least adjectival and the most nominal adjectives, denoting
nationality and ethnic background, and "denominal" adjectives with
the meaning "consisting of", "involving", "relating to", and also
nouns in the attributive position. "On the basis of this
classification," they write, "we can expect the following order:"

I + II    certain important people
I + III   the same restricted income
I + IV    your present annual turnover
II + III   a funny red hat
II + IV   an enormous tidal wave
I + II + IV certain rich American producers

They do recognize, however, that "different hypotactic relations of
premodifiers will upset the normal order" -- in other words, meaning
sometimes trumps the rule ("dirty British books" vs. "British dirty
books").

For a more practical take, see:

http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/410/grammar/adjord.htm

It gives the ordering as:

Opinion-Size-Age-Shape-Colour-Origin-Material-Purpose

and has examples in a nifty tabular form (as does Quirk).
	
Also: http://www.world-english.org/adjectiveplacement.htm

Surely these rules are more than conventions, but reflect engrained
ways of perceiving and "ordering" the world. When I was in school,
the required reading on this theme was "Language, Thought, and
Reality", by Benjamin Whorf.

--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxx