Native Speakers Don't Know They Know

choi

full title: Native Speakers Don't Know They Know Most of the Grammar They Know

Johnson | Hidden in Plain Sight; Most people don't know they know most of the grammar they know. Economist, Sept 24, 2016.
http://www.economist.com/news/bo ... -hidden-plain-sight

Bote:
(a) "WHO can say what order should be used to list adjectives in English? Mark Forsyth, in 'The Elements of Eloquence [published in UK 2013 and in US 2014],' describes it as: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose and then Noun. 'So you can have a lovely 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.'
(i) BBC Trending: Why the Green Great Dragon Can't Exist. BBC, Sept 6, 2016
www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-37285796
("Whoah! (Matt told BBC Trending that is the most popular digital response he's had to the passage)" )
(A) The "that" in the quotation is "whoah."
(B) In dictionaries in UK and US, it is always "whoa" -- "whoah" not found in any dictionary.
(C) The title comes directly from Mark Forsyth's book, as one can see from the snapsot of the book that was incorporated in Matthew Anderson's tweet.
(D) The "green great dragon" arose from

Letter 163
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Letter_163
(summary: 'Tolkien first tried to write a story about a dragon at age seven. The story was forgotten but he still recalled his mother stating that he could not say 'a green great dragon,' you had to say 'a great green dragon.' He wondered then and still did wonder why

In JRR Tolkien, The Letters of JRR Tolkien. two publishers, 1981.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Letters_of_J._R._R._Tolkien
(ii) BBC Editor Highlights Often Overlooked English Language Rule, NPR, Sept 8, 2016.
http://www.npr.org/2016/09/08/49 ... glish-language-rule
(A) "And you'll never see a movie called 'My Greek, Fat, Big Wedding.' Or hear a song called polka dot, yellow, itsy-bitsy, teenie-weenie (ph) bikini. * * * And that means big and fat before Greek [My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)] and itsy-bitsy, teenie-weenie (ph) before polka dot and yellow."

Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It ... low_Polkadot_Bikini

* The "polkadot" is a noun, not an adjective. See polka dot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polka_dot
(section 1 Etymology)
* I do not know what "ph" stands for.
(B) "Anderson's Twitter feed is now filled with replies, like, I need a brand new, read [sic; should be 'red'], correcting pen."

choi

(b) "Just as many psychologists moan that outsiders think the discipline is mainly about abnormal psychology, linguists haven't sufficiently spread the word that they are not out to ban split infinitives or correct the misuse of 'whom.' They consider themselves scientists (in a discipline that overlaps with psychology, cognitive science and others) in trying to learn how the human mind works."

split infinitive
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive
(section 1.2 Modern English)

(c) "Take pronunciation. The –s that marks a plural in English is pronounced differently depending on the previous consonants: if the consonant is 'voiced' (ie, the vocal cords vibrate [one can feel it by place a finger over voice box, just below Adam's apple], as in 'v,' 'g' and 'd'), then the –s is pronounced like a 'z.' If the consonant is 'unvoiced' [vocal cords do not vibrate] (like 'f,' 'k' and 't'), then the –s is simply pronounced as an 's.' Every native English-speaker uses this rule every day. Children master it by three or four. But nobody is ever taught it, and almost nobody knows they know it."
(i) alternation (linguistics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternation_(linguistics)
(section 1 Phonologically conditioned alternation)
* sibilant (adj; from Latin verb sibilare to hiss, whistle, of imitative origin): "having, containing, or producing the sound of or a sound resembling that of the s or the sh in sash <a sibilant snake>"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sibilant
* sibilant (adj): "making or characterized by a hissing sound"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sibilant
(ii) The above deals with only pronunciations of "s" (plus "es") in the plural form of a noun. But how to form a plural form of a noun is another matter. which may be irregular and inexplicable. See, eg,
(A) Adding -ves or -s to Words Ending in f or fe. Howtospell, undated.
https://howtospell.co.uk/plural-ves-rule
(B) English plurals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_plurals

(d) "Because linguists spend their careers trying to tease out what people actually do say and why, they get cross when people equate 'grammar' with a host of rules that most people don't actually observe. Take the so-called rule against ending sentences with a preposition. In fact, saying things like: 'What are you talking about?' is deeply embedded in the grammar of English. 'About what are you talking?' strikes real speakers of English as absurd. So it annoys linguists to no end to hear the latter 'rule' associated with 'grammar,' while the real, intricate grammar already embedded in the mind is ignored."

Catherine Soanes, Can you end a sentence with a preposition? Oxford Dictionaries, Nov 28, 2011 (blog).
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.c ... myths-prepositions/
(A) "she enjoys being fussed over"
* fuss (vi): "to shower flattering attentions <fussing over the grandchildren>"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fuss
* fuss (vt): "treat (someone) with excessive attention or affection <she flattered and fussed her>"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/fuss
(B) "To sum up, the deferring of prepositions sounds perfectly natural and is part of standard English."

defer (vt): "put off (an action or event) to a later time; postpone"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/defer

(e) Past tense of the verb greenlight?

Wiktionary listed both greenlighted and greenlit. Oxforddictonaries.com has greenlighted only. Google results show twice as many "greenlit" as "greenlighted."