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What about the effect where for some pairs of words that don't theoretically have ordering preference (kiki/bouba vs bouba/kiki), (plus/minus vs minus/plus), (o

What about the effect where for some pairs of words that don't theoretically have ordering preference (kiki/bouba vs bouba/kiki), (plus/minus vs minus/plus), (on/off vs off/on), (positive/negative vs negative/positive) have some psychological order that most people use and if the other ordering is used, it sound weird? Does this effect have a name?

viraptor 2y ago
Yes, there's a Vsauce short about that, but given the amount of them there's no way I'll find it... Edit, found it another way: "Irreversible binomial" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_binomial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_binomial
- jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
  Reading examples of unwritten rules in the English language always feels kind of unsettling to me. Like the order adjectives are supposed to appear in.
foreigner 2y ago
I've noticed that comparing languages - e.g. in Hebrew they say "less or more" instead of the English "more or less".
- stavros 2y ago
  Same in Greek, now that you mention it.
incognito124 2y ago
Yes. As per etymologynerd, English speakers tend to like trochaic stress rhythm in sentences, like "salt and pepper" or "lee and sophie" where a different ordering sounds weird.
- zoky 2y ago
  Maybe, but there are plenty of counter examples: “Chicken and egg” “Cookies and cream” “Heaven and Earth” “Chapter and verse” Seems like some phrases just are a certain way, and inverting them sounds wrong just because that’s what we’re used to hearing.
  - mkl 2y ago
    I think it's entirely what we're used to. Mainly when I hear one the other way around it's a non-native speaker, but sometimes the inverted order is used for effect, e.g. A Song of Ice and Fire sounds off-kilter, like its world and characters.
  - jihadjihad 2y ago
    These examples all consist of a trochee followed by an iamb--another word for this specific metrical foot is choriamb [0]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choriamb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choriamb
tantalor 2y ago
Those are idioms.
JoshTriplett 2y ago
Even among words that do theoretically have an ordering preference, some people have different habits. I knew someone who habitually said "three or two", rather than "two or three". Leaving aside the effect of prosody mentioned in another comment, I think the rest of it is habit, together with the brain's tendency to group things. If you're used to hearing "plus or minus", your brain may be grouping it together into a phrase whose meaning you understand directly without decomposition, so if you hear "minus or plus" there's a moment of having to map the components to the composite meaning, together with wondering if the speaker intends the difference to have a meaning. (In mathematics, there's a reason to have both ± and ∓, since you can use them both in the same equation when you need "minus when the other one is plus, and plus when the other one is minus". For instance, a±b∓c means "a+b-c or a-b+c".) I don't know if this has a name, but if it does I'd love to know it.
- LordDragonfang 2y ago
  > For instance, a±b∓c means "a+b-c or a-b+c". I feel like this would be less confusing if rendered as "±(a+b-c)". It's the same amount of cognitive effort for figuring out the second term/factor, but you get the first one for free.
  - z3dd 2y ago
    that makes a and -a
  - billyjmc 2y ago
    What you’ve suggested is not equivalent. The a is always taken without negation, and that’s not the case in your rendering.
    - LordDragonfang 2y ago
      Ah. "a±(b-c)" then. The fact I made that mistake in the first place just makes me more convinced the original form is unnecessarily complex to parse.
adzm 2y ago
You might be interested in reading up on branching and related concepts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branching_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branching_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-directionality_parameter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-directionality_parameter
mtndew4brkfst 2y ago
In (US?) English if you were to describe some thing and you had many adjectives for its size, color, origin, age, a visual pattern like "polka dot" or striped, and so on - many native speakers (at least in my region) would intuitively assemble that clause in the same order as each other without really being able to clearly articulate why. There are some supposed grammar rules that inform it but in my circles people just explain it as basically due to vibes. It was definitely not anything I remember from my public school education growing up. If I'm describing a large, heavy, square, shiny, metal, block - that's the order that feels right for me. If I try shifting any pair of those around it just feels weird and the farther apart they appear in my original ordering, the weirder the swap would feel for me. "square metal heavy shiny large block" has awful 'mouthfeel', as it were. It's also a bit jarring to hear aloud.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Big shiny square metal block doesn’t look so bad to me, but big shiny heavy square metal block does. Perhaps big it is the switch back and forth… big and heavy are fuzzily size-like characteristics while shiny is not… Is a big shiny square metal block the same thing as a big square shiny metal block? I’m not sure. I think the former is a big square metal block which happens to also be shiny, while the latter is a big square block made of a shiny type of metal. Does that make any sense at all?
  - mtndew4brkfst 2y ago
    I love the examples in your second paragraph - that helps make the point that they're not entirely commutative. Still, I couldn't write a nice generalizable rule on why I do agree with your breakdown of these examples.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      It is funny that shininess is a characteristic that can be attributed to the block, or the metal that makes up the block, despite the block being made of the metal!
  - 2y ago
JyB 2y ago
That seem completely unrelated/off-topic. Those are patterns that people hear and repeat. The article’s effect describes something that is apparently not just shared information, that is deeper.

viraptor 2y ago

Yes, there's a Vsauce short about that, but given the amount of them there's no way I'll find it... Edit, found it another way: "Irreversible binomial" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_binomial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_binomial

jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
Reading examples of unwritten rules in the English language always feels kind of unsettling to me. Like the order adjectives are supposed to appear in.

foreigner 2y ago

I've noticed that comparing languages - e.g. in Hebrew they say "less or more" instead of the English "more or less".

stavros 2y ago
Same in Greek, now that you mention it.

incognito124 2y ago

Yes. As per etymologynerd, English speakers tend to like trochaic stress rhythm in sentences, like "salt and pepper" or "lee and sophie" where a different ordering sounds weird.

zoky 2y ago
Maybe, but there are plenty of counter examples: “Chicken and egg” “Cookies and cream” “Heaven and Earth” “Chapter and verse” Seems like some phrases just are a certain way, and inverting them sounds wrong just because that’s what we’re used to hearing.
- mkl 2y ago
  I think it's entirely what we're used to. Mainly when I hear one the other way around it's a non-native speaker, but sometimes the inverted order is used for effect, e.g. A Song of Ice and Fire sounds off-kilter, like its world and characters.
- jihadjihad 2y ago
  These examples all consist of a trochee followed by an iamb--another word for this specific metrical foot is choriamb [0]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choriamb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choriamb

tantalor 2y ago

Those are idioms.

JoshTriplett 2y ago

Even among words that do theoretically have an ordering preference, some people have different habits. I knew someone who habitually said "three or two", rather than "two or three". Leaving aside the effect of prosody mentioned in another comment, I think the rest of it is habit, together with the brain's tendency to group things. If you're used to hearing "plus or minus", your brain may be grouping it together into a phrase whose meaning you understand directly without decomposition, so if you hear "minus or plus" there's a moment of having to map the components to the composite meaning, together with wondering if the speaker intends the difference to have a meaning. (In mathematics, there's a reason to have both ± and ∓, since you can use them both in the same equation when you need "minus when the other one is plus, and plus when the other one is minus". For instance, a±b∓c means "a+b-c or a-b+c".) I don't know if this has a name, but if it does I'd love to know it.

LordDragonfang 2y ago
> For instance, a±b∓c means "a+b-c or a-b+c". I feel like this would be less confusing if rendered as "±(a+b-c)". It's the same amount of cognitive effort for figuring out the second term/factor, but you get the first one for free.
- z3dd 2y ago
  that makes a and -a
- billyjmc 2y ago
  What you’ve suggested is not equivalent. The a is always taken without negation, and that’s not the case in your rendering.
  - LordDragonfang 2y ago
    Ah. "a±(b-c)" then. The fact I made that mistake in the first place just makes me more convinced the original form is unnecessarily complex to parse.

adzm 2y ago

You might be interested in reading up on branching and related concepts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branching_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branching_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-directionality_parameter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-directionality_parameter

mtndew4brkfst 2y ago

In (US?) English if you were to describe some thing and you had many adjectives for its size, color, origin, age, a visual pattern like "polka dot" or striped, and so on - many native speakers (at least in my region) would intuitively assemble that clause in the same order as each other without really being able to clearly articulate why. There are some supposed grammar rules that inform it but in my circles people just explain it as basically due to vibes. It was definitely not anything I remember from my public school education growing up. If I'm describing a large, heavy, square, shiny, metal, block - that's the order that feels right for me. If I try shifting any pair of those around it just feels weird and the farther apart they appear in my original ordering, the weirder the swap would feel for me. "square metal heavy shiny large block" has awful 'mouthfeel', as it were. It's also a bit jarring to hear aloud.

bee_rider 2y ago
Big shiny square metal block doesn’t look so bad to me, but big shiny heavy square metal block does. Perhaps big it is the switch back and forth… big and heavy are fuzzily size-like characteristics while shiny is not… Is a big shiny square metal block the same thing as a big square shiny metal block? I’m not sure. I think the former is a big square metal block which happens to also be shiny, while the latter is a big square block made of a shiny type of metal. Does that make any sense at all?
- mtndew4brkfst 2y ago
  I love the examples in your second paragraph - that helps make the point that they're not entirely commutative. Still, I couldn't write a nice generalizable rule on why I do agree with your breakdown of these examples.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    It is funny that shininess is a characteristic that can be attributed to the block, or the metal that makes up the block, despite the block being made of the metal!
- 2y ago

JyB 2y ago

That seem completely unrelated/off-topic. Those are patterns that people hear and repeat. The article’s effect describes something that is apparently not just shared information, that is deeper.