13 ms·

There's a good post about this subject on the English SE: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/1155/what-is-the-rule-for-adjective-order http://english.s

• adolph 12y ago
  I wonder if Margaret Wise Brown knew that as she placed the big red barn by the great green field?
  • pcrh 12y ago
    Wise Brown Margaret?
• Swizec 12y ago
  Doesn't "a great green dragon" have a different meaning than "a great green dragon" though? The former implies "green dragon" is the name/species of dragon, which happens to be big/great. Whereas the latter just means a big/great dragon, which is green.
  • dfxm12 12y ago
    I don't think the language itself implies any of that. That's just our brains inferring something about the blanks for us when there is a lack of context. I mean, if you were reading a book, a good author might go into detail about how "great dragons" or "green dragons" are a different species from "dragons" before using both in long chains of adjectives. Maybe it is left ambiguous on purpose, just to exercise the reader's imagination.
  • anigbrowl 12y ago
    No. There's a breed of dog called a Great Dane (which is actually German), so it would be appropriate to say 'a black Great Dane.' Obviously if you had a fantasy novel with dragons where they were classified by color or there were Greater and Lesser Dragon breeds, you could set your own rules of usage, but in the abstract dragons have to be treated like any other noun.
    • vacri 12y ago
      It seems to me that you agree with Swizec. 'Great Dragon' sounds just like 'Great Dane' when you put other adjectives. Certainly to my mind it sounds like it's a particular species of dragon. Given that the only place green-coloured dragons live is in fantasy (the komodo isn't green), there's pretty free reign to interpret it. And in the context of animals, it's particularly unusual to use the adjective 'great' by itself, without it being part of the breed name. 'Great big' maybe, but rarely just 'great'. If you saw a large bulldog, it would sound strange to call it a 'great bulldog' instead of a 'great big bulldog' or other adjective. This being said, because of their most prominent colour, we can talk about "gray great white sharks", and get the colour in on both sides :)
      • cecilpl 12y ago
        I have a bulldog, and not only does he fetch, he can fetch me beer! He's way better than other bulldogs - I'd say he's pretty great. He's a great bulldog.
        • vacri 12y ago
          You're quite correct - I realised about five minutes after posting that what I wrote is really about when you want to use 'great' to mean 'larger in size'. If someone says "I have a great bulldog", it generally means a bulldog that's excellent in some way. If someone says "I have a great brown bulldog", it's more likely that they're now using 'great' to talk about size.
      • anigbrowl 12y ago
        Well, I wasn't too sure because he accidentally typed the same phrase for both examples and the context ended up being a bit ambiguous.
  • ricree 12y ago
    Only because of adjective ordering. The fact that great usually comes before green means that when the usual word order is reversed, it is because "great" is binding closer than normal for some other reason besides normal adjective precedence. So yes, it does imply something, but only because "green great" is considered wrong.
  • kansface 12y ago
    Both quotes are the same ("a great green dragon").
  • antimagic 12y ago
    Yes. Mathematically, it looks more like this: (great (green dragon)). Or to add to the list of adjectives: (roaring (great (green dragon))) using BNF, you might say something like [noun] := [adjective] [noun] But this is not what the original post is getting at. For some reason, if you want to describe a house as being big and red, you must(1) use "big red house", and not "red big house". 1) Whereby "must" I actually mean in the vast majority of cases. There are always twisted counter examples, like: "Aaron: Wow, look at all of those big houses - aren't they so much prettier than the little houses! Betty: Well, mostly, but if you look at the red big house, it's actually much uglier than even the little houses" This counter example (mostly) works because Aaron first identifies "big houses" as being a noun group, so Betty can adjust the noun group with the red adjective.
• daturkel 12y ago
  Came here to post the same link. English adjective order is one of those things that we're never taught as speakers of English as a first language, but I'd imagine it's taught to those learning it as a second language.
  • snitko 12y ago
    Actually, I don't think it's specific to English. In Russian, you can say "Red Big Barn", but it also sounds wrong. So I'm guessing it's similar in other languages.
  • vegedor 12y ago
    For languages close enough to english, the methods of teaching are reasonably organic, as well. I don't remember learning this, discovering it later in preparations for TOEFL. I Can't speak for all, however.
  • arrrg 12y ago
    I don’t recall ever being taught anything about adjective order, but I did pick it up naturally. Or not. I’m really not sure. Some light googling seems to indicate that in German (my native language) the adjective order doesn’t really matter, but some say it actually does (citing pretty much exactly the same rules as in the linked article). To my ears „grüner, großer Drachen“ doesn’t sound as correct as „großer, grüner Drachen“, but maybe that’s just my knowledge of English leaking into my German. It doesn’t sound entirely incorrect to me, either, not in the same way “green great dragon” does. Maybe German does have the same rules about adjective order, but they aren’t as strong? Maybe a teacher would put a wiggly line under wrongly ordered adjectives, but it wouldn’t actually be a serious mistake, just a weird stylistic choice? Also, it’s entirely possible I actually was taught about adjective order, but have forgotten all about it. If you learn English for nine years (with either four or five lessons per week) you do lots of reading and writing, especially during the later years, actual texts from the real world and actual essays. It‘s very possible I picked it up through that and it was never necessary to explicitly teach me about adjective order.
    • jameshart 12y ago
• peterwwillis 12y ago
  I always assumed the ordering was based not on rules, but on the context of the subject in order to determine descriptive relevance. For example, in "a great green dragon", the fact that the dragon is 'great' is significantly more important than the fact that it is 'green'. If you had a small red dragon and a great green dragon, it'll be easier to pick out the quality of 'great' [meaning large] before the color. And with "a scaly fire-breathing dragon", even though the fire-breathing part is more relevant in terms of danger, the scaly part is more descriptive; the dragon is scaly more often than it is fire-breathing, and it provides clearer imagery of what the dragon is like. Of course, this has nothing to do with combinations of adjectives that become a different subject when strung together. "red Spanish leather" is talking about spanish leather that is red, whereas "Spanish red leather" could be describing a color called 'Spanish red', or a specific offshoot of Spanish leather that is more than simply a Spanish leather dyed red.
  • archgoon 12y ago
    Doesn't account for the fact that most people would say "Keep going down past the big red barn until you reach the big green barn." Despite the most distinguishing factor between the barns would be their color.
• danielweber 12y ago
  HN discussion of that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5558023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5558023 (Over a year ago, I feel old!)