本帖最后由 choi 于 8-23-2018 11:34 编辑
About order of adjectives.
(1) Mark Forsyth's
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Forsyth
2013 book The Elements of Eloquence said the order of adjectives are:
1 Opinion
2 Size
3 Age
4 Shape
5 Color
6 Origin
7 Material
8 Purpose
Immediately following this order, wrote Marissa Laliberte, The Crazy English Grammar Rule You Didn't Know You Knew. Readers Digest, undated
"If more than one adjective falls into the same category, the order for those words doesn't matter."
https://www.rd.com/culture/adjective-order-rules/
(2) Commenting about the above order,
Simon Horobin (professor of English language, Oxford U), Beware the Bad Big Wolf: Why You Need to Put Your Adjectives in the Right Order. The Conversation, Sept 6, 2016
https://theconversation.com/bewa ... e-right-order-64982
Quote:
(a) "In fact, even if we stick to just two adjectives it is possible to find examples that appear to break the rule. The 'big bad wolf' [as opposed to the disfavored bad, big wolf] of fairy tale, for instance, shows the size adjective preceding the opinion one; similarly, 'big stupid' is more common than 'stupid big.' Examples like these are instead witness to the 'Polyanna Principle,' by which speakers prefer to present positive, or indifferent, values before negative ones.
"Another consideration of Forsyth's proposed ordering sequence is that it makes no reference to other constraints that influence adjective order, such as when we use two adjectives that fall into the same category. Little Richard's song 'Long Tall Sally' would have sounded strange if he had called it Tall Long Sally, but these are both adjectives of size.
(b) "a little black dress does not refer to any small black dress but one that is suitable for particular kinds of social engagement. Since speakers view a 'little black dress' as a single entity, its order is fixed; as a result, modifying adjectives must precede little – a 'polyester little black dress.' This means that an adjective specifying its material appears before those referring to size and colour, once again contravening Forsyth's rule.
My comment:
(a) A crop of discussions appeared in 2016 on this topic (though the book was published 3 years earlier), due to the interest aroused by a 2016 Economist article.
(b) The Conversation (website)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation_(website)
(2010- ; not-for-profit; table: Headquarters Melbourne, Australia, Owner The Conversation Trust)
(c) Pollyanna
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollyanna
(d) Little Richard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Richard
had a 1956 R&B (Rhythm and Blues) hit "Long Tall Sally." Beatles, Elvis and Led Zeppelin performed also the song -- at least a few select verses (like paragraphs in a prose) of the song.
Whatever the Wiki says about origin of the song, lyrics of the songs (by all musical groups) is that Long Tall Sally is a lover of Uncle John, who is married to Aunt Mary. When Uncle John was with Long Tall Sally, "He saw Aunt Mary coming and he ducked back in the alley, oh baby"
long-tall-Sally (n): "a tall girl or woman <Isn't she a gorgeous long-tall-Sally?>"
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/long-tall-Sally
(e) This morning -- before I did an online research whose result is shown above -- I asks a librarian at Boston Public Library about the order in Crazy Rich Asians (because both adjectives are in the same category). She says there is nothing wrong with Rich Crazy Asians, and speculates the movie studio places Crazy first to draw attention to that word.
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