As in, "two large middle-aged white American working men", I’ve seen various explanations of why adjectives are ordered in a certain way in English, as in
article/quantity-opinion- size(length/width)-shape-temperature-condition-age-(shape again)-color-origin-material-purpose(gerund usually) etc.
But does anyone have a definitive formula for not saying " Irish black hunting two small dogs"? And I’m curious about other languages that allow adjective strings, is the ordering language-specific or are there universals? And which languages allow adjective strings, and if they don’t, how do they apply multiple adjectives?
As languages become more analytical, so the theory goes, they need more rigid rules of word order. Latin and Ancient Greek were very synthetic languages and had no rigid rules of word or der. Thus, it was possible to use constructions in these languages more like your example: " Irish black hunting two small dogs" instead of "Two small black Irish hunting dogs. In Latin and Greek, however, the adjective always came after the noun instead of before the noun as in the Germanic and Slavic languages. There seems to be some inconsistency in the Celtic languages. For instance, "The new fort" is An nDún nua in Modern Irish Gaelic but Ancient Gaulish had Noviodunum an Noviobriga (The moern Noyon in France and Nobrega in Portugal).
Rules of word order are also less rigid in Japanese than in English and this is why, I understand, it is easier to write Haiku-style poetry in that language.
:)
So you’re saying that in more synthetic languages the rules were not important and any ordering would sound acceptable, while in languages that required the correct word order, the idea was extended to sequences even if they had the same role and the same identifying markers. Sounds reasonable, but did Greek or Latin have any preference in ordering adjectives (or whatever we understand as ‘adjectives’) and if not, why did more analytic languages settle on a complicated system ( much more complicated than SVO) when they could have retained the system of random order, since you perfectly understood the second example which sounds totally wrong in English.
Rules of word order are also less rigid in Japanese than in English and this is why, I understand, it is easier to write Haiku-style poetry in that language.
I’ve been learning Japanese for one year and a half and have made quite good progress so far, but I don’t think Japanese word order is very free, I think it’s rather rigid. Maybe it’s just me and my limited knowledge of Japanese though.
I can’t think of exhaustive examples, but I think in Romance languages when you have a string of adjectives, you tend to place subjective adjectives before and objective adjectives after the noun to which they refer, but using the copulative conjunction and is also very common.
I would like to comment on both your posts but I could use a little more time. Worse yet, I’m getting terribly sleepy. However, probably tomorrow sometime. Take Care!
I agree, ‘basic’ Japanese seems very rigid in word order to me, and a more relaxed word order is common in poetry in most languages. And in French it’s as you say, as far as putting adjectives before or after the noun, it’s useful to distinguish ‘grand homme’ from homme grand’ and gluing them together with ‘et’ which also works in English, makes the order much less important. ‘Green and long’ works, ‘green long’ doesn’t.
English insists on putting adjectives before their nouns in almost all cases, but what I want to know is why English insists on a correct order before the noun. Are there languages that don’t use the copula and also require strict order, and what order do they require? Is the English system arbitrary, or is there some hidden logic that I haven’t discovered yet?
What I can say about the English adjective order is that normally you have adjectives that are more intrinsic to the noun closer to it, and adjectives that describe an opinion farther away from the noun, not unlike what I described regarding Romance languages.
If a process of adding attributes is equivalent to a process of closer definition of a broader object to a more narrow, it cannot be arbitrary in any language.
So happens in our case.
1.There is a population of dogs. No attributes.
2.Hunting dogs are a population included in the population of dogs. 1 attribute.
What is the name of the dog race ?
Black Hunting Dog ?
Irish Hunting Dog ?
Irish Black Hunting Dog ?
Black Irish Hunting Dog ?
I cannot neither change the race name, nor intrude with an attribute into the body of the term. It would be just a crime !
Well, I suppose there’s ‘Irish Hunting Dogs’.
What does narrow the object, ‘small’ or ‘black’? If all of
IHD are black, so ‘black’ is a synonym.
3.Black Irish hunting dogs are a population equivalent to the population of Irish hunting dogs. 2 attributes.
4.Small black IHD are a population included in the population of black IHD. 3 attributes.
5. 2 small black IHD are a population included in the population of small black IHD. 4 attributes.
If a process of adding attributes is equivalent to a process of closer definition of a broader object to a more narrow, it cannot be arbitrary in any language.
Makes sense, but don’t forget that each language has its own way to comprehend the universe around it. Just a thought. By the way, with
If all of
IHD are black, so ‘black’ is a synonym.
you mean that all Irish hunting dogs are black or only the ones in the race (as you can see, I don’t know squat about dogs, either. To be honest, I can say that I know squat about very few things. What a bad feeling.)
Actually, they’re not all black, the red setter is one. So the question is whether size or color is more ‘narrowing’, which should vary depending on the noun in question. But in English, size seems to always come before color, whether you’re talking about dogs, automobiles or non-specified objects.
Of course, my theory is limited to the cases, in which speech partners know (or guess) about narrowing property of an attribute.
You write that size seems to always come before colour in English, and I remember that it happens in other languages , too.
But let’s imagine a situation. A shop sells two kinds of cars: small ones and large ones of any colour. Doesn’t it sound naturally, if the shopowner says: "We’ve sold our last red small car !" ?
However, we notice a small red car in the street flow. We are not certain, what is more narrowing, size or colour. Here I feel act the law of potential narrowing. The colour is psychologically a discreet notion, so it is more narrowing, more classifying, less synonymical, more objective. The size is a continuous notion, so it is less narrowing, less classifying, more synonymical, more subjective. it determines the place distribution.
The position of the adjective in Classical Latin and Ancient Greek was variable and optional. For example, in Greek inscriptions, we find both Theoi agrioi "The wild gods" and Skleroi theoi "The stern gods". We also find from an inscription the phrase ...phonio gar aori plêgeis - "...slain by a murderous sword" literally, Murderous (or bloody) / by /sword / slain. Latin was no different. Magnus Saturnus meant "Great Saturn" but we also find an inscription from North Africa which says Saturno magno sacrum "To great Saturn, a sacrificial offering."
For "high walls" you could say either alti muri or muri alti (the latter being modern Italian).
The willy-nilly way in which adjectives could be used in Classical Latin can also be seen in the following sentence from Apuleius:
exsangui pallore trepidantem puerum
(the) bloodlessly pale trembling boy
In the popular or Vulgar Latin there was a movement away from this and in putting the adjectives after the noun for the most part as in canem negrum which later became French chien noir, Italian cane nero, and Romanian câine negru. There are still a few exceptions as in French un grande hero, Spanish un gran heroe, Romanian un mare viteaz all meaning "a great hero." In this case, I’m told that the adjective appears before the noun so it won’t be confused with the alternative meaning of "grande" or "mare" which is ‘big" instead of "great".
In Gaulish (Celtic) it seems to have been the same way. For example, there is one inscription which reads:
Nata vimpi curmi da
Girl beautiful beer give (me)
"Beautiful girl give me some beer."
and there is one which reads:
Tinovimpi Morucin
Divine-beautiful maiden
"Divine and beautiful maiden."
I’m not an expert on Japanese by a long shot, however, here are some translations into Japanese of an English sentence by several different Japanese speakers. I think it illustrates some of the fluidity in Japanese word order as opposed to English even though I’m told that the first two sentences are in a more casual Japanese and the other two in a more formal Japanese:
"Sometimes I wear a jade necklace."
1) Hisui no nekkuresu o suru koto mo ari masu.
2) Tokidoki hisui no nekkuresu o shimasu / tsukemasu
3) Tokidoki hisui no nekkuresu o tsukeru kotoamrimasu
4) Tokidoki hisui no nekkuresu wo mi ni tsukera
koto ga arimasu.
