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JoshuaZ comments on Being a teacher - Less Wrong
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Yes, I only recently found out that English has rules for adjectival order, and was shocked to realize it. I always did it without thinking. Apparently as a general rule of thumb, the more subjective something is the earlier it should go. But that's not all, since apparently age always goes after subjective opinion but always before colors. And there are lots of other priority rules. I'm waiting for someone to construct an example where one has adjectives in pairs that exhibit non-transitive order.
To me, a "solitary blue Smurf" is the color blue, but a "blue, solitary Smurf" is sad.
From The Night Before Christmas
"He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,"
versus
"He was chubby and plump, a right old jolly elf,"
The original doesn't make me think that Saint Nick is literally old. It's more like the "old" in "good old boys" (which is another example; compare to "old good boys"). The transposition seems to change the literal meaning. If you permute some more, you can wind up with nonsense - "an old jolly right elf", "an old right jolly elf", etc.
As another example, I would have a different idea of what's being said if someone pointed out to me a "sweaty hot runner" versus a "hot sweaty runner". The first makes me think the runner is sexually attractive, but the second doesn't.
The nonsense permutations, where "right" doesn't come first, are probably because "right" is acting as an adverb here, modifying the adjectives and not the noun.
Ah, yes. That sounds right.
This doesn't' seem to be a transitivity issue. Rather, this seems to rest on the fact that the same adjectives have different meanings, and the different meanings fall into different parts of the hierarchy. But I'm not sure.
First, I guess I should clear up that we're talking about commutativity, not transitivity.
I think it is an example of non-commutativity. It's exactly the same words with the order switched, and the meaning changes. However, you're also right to point out that the meaning of the word "hot" is changing even though the word itself is not.
Here's an example of non-commutativity in which the words' individual meanings stay the same, but the overall meaning changes.
"I remember my good first attempt."
"I remember my first good attempt."
Yes, I meant transitivity, as in the correct seeming order for adjectives A,B,C seems in pairs to be AB, BC,CA.
Oh, I see. Sorry I missed the point. I don't have any examples of examples of that.
The idea of non-transitivity sounds really interesting -- can you point to an explanation of the supposed rules?
This has a rough summary of the rules. If the rules are as hierarchical as they suggest then there aren't any non-transitive issues. But there are some adjectives that don't fall into those categories.