Is assholish considered opinion, shape, origin, or purpose?
To be assholish, Language Log covered this a month ago. So I could name an example, but it wouldn't be my own.
Before cell phone cameras, hardly anybody ever saw their own.
3 That would be around the time bleaching came into fashion.
So that's what a "bleached tweet" is. I was wondering.
It's a rule worth breaking. Consider: the dark, wide sea.
6: "Bad" is the purpose of the wolf in the narrative, not an opinion.
Oh hell, I can't resist:
--Fuzzy little spider
--Big cuddly bear (is "cuddly" an opinion? Or is it the bear's purpose?)
--Lumpy old couch
--Great gray owl
7 can be generalised to any case where the origin specifies a recognised type of the thing: an apple Danish pastry; an amber Irish whiskey.
Without cheating and reading LL: To some degree. Violating this order leads to the violating suffix being reinterpreted as a compound noun. This is obvious in D&D and other fantasy monster names: you can say "green Great Dragon" or "amorphous Old One" because you don't think "great" and "old" are directly telling you about size or age.
There's some more flexibility. Putting pauses between each adjective lets you do almost whatever, like what Alex did in 9.
"Danish pastry" and "Russian Doll" are compound nouns. If you asked for those, nobody would think you were requesting a cookie made in Copenhagen or a Barbie made in Moscow.
I actually taught this stuff the other day. I'd never noticed it at all.
I didn't know you taught cosmetology.
7,14: Then "porcelain Chinese vase" or "inlaid mahogany 18th century French chair". Material can come first.
Still, "Chinese porcelain vase" and "18th century, French inlaid-mahogany chair" sound more natural to me.
"French inlaid chair" makes me think of Edward VII.
I didn't know you taught cosmetology.
Cosmetymology. The art of making fake word derivations look plausible.
While I think 18 sounds less natural than 19, it does pretty clearly show that "sound like a maniac" is way too strong.
This is giving the language log thing away, but it's more interesting than the thing excerpted in the OP. Basically there clearly are rules for adjective order, but the rule in the OP isn't the rule, and no one quite knows what the rules are.
19. An antique dealer's catalogue wouls say "Inlaid-mahogany chair, French, 18th century". I don't come across such things in less structured contexts.
21. Why Edward VII? Do you always picture them as broken by being sat on by an enormously fat person?
28.2: I was thinking of his special sex chair at the Paris brothel.
I do love this conceit, though: "Things native English speakers know, but don't know we know."
An example in which the order is flexible:
Dried organic nectarine
organic dried nectarine
Seem equally natural to me.
Medicinal herbs tea
Sounds better than
Herb medical tea
And reverses "material" and "purpose" on the list (and, yes, I am looking for examples at my breakfast table.)
Jesus people. Rules for English take the form of 'i before e except after c, or when sounding like A as in neighbor and weigh.' Exceptions prove the rule.
Violating this order leads to the violating suffix being reinterpreted as a compound noun.
Except for the lumpy old couch and others in 11, where it doesn't do that.
A surfeit of exceptions, that is.
I like the example of:
Big ugly
Ugly little.
From the link
Dried organic nectarine
organic dried nectarine
I would read these as meaningfully different -- the first were grown under organic conditions, but I don't know anything about the drying, and it's not even necessarily a food product (that is, you might be complaining about the streaks of dried organic nectarine all over your kid's high chair). "Organic dried nectarine" you bought dried at Whole Foods and was dried using only organic processes.
you might be complaining about the streaks of dried organic nectarine all over your kid's high chair
That makes sense.
dried using only organic processes
This doesn't; I'm not sure what non-organic drying processes would look like?
"oh, pick up some dried nectarine"
"they have organic and conventional- any preference?"
"uh, I guess the organic dried nectarine then"
I would read these as meaningfully different
I would, too, if specifically prompted to look for differences. If I encountered either in the wild on a package, I doubt I'd blink.
This isn't the same thing (punctuation really), but apropos of the nectarines: did I mention the time that I met three young people (I was also 18) on the Amtrak to Boston, and we argued for quite a while about whether the food item with ingredients "APRICOTS, PRODUCT OF TURKEY" was vegan? It was 3 vs the 1 who cared, but we couldn't convince her using available evidence. I don't even know if we could persuade her that it was overwhelmingly likely that the apricots were themselves of Turkish provenance. It is strange to think that we must all have grown up and integrated ourselves into society somehow.
This doesn't; I'm not sure what non-organic drying processes would look like?
Coated with something that people who cared would call a 'chemical'.
I would say no, given that honey isn't.
But civet coffee is a waste product from the civet having fed in the past, whereas honey exists to feed bees in the future. An awful lot of wild and semi-wild plants are distributed in one way or another through animal feeding habits. Can vegans not eat any of them?
Other customers' strings of adjectives are what led me to stop going to Starbucks so many years ago. That and the crappy coffee.
47 sounds like the correct distinction to me. Otherwise vegans couldn't cook over fires burning cow chips.
It depends whether people are trailing wild civets with a set of tongs and a bag, or if the civets are constrained somehow, right?
In the era of Palm handhelds I made a joke website for a startup run by palm civets, solely for my own bored amusement, and got an email from an interested investor.
Ideally that story would be followed by "Then I shorted the whole NASDAQ and that's how I now own a tropical island."
Vegan doctrine is that there is no animal use without abuse. Oddly, the vegan that said that, made her living by using cute farm animals to convince people to give her money.
My mother makes fun of pretentious restaurants by saying they serve "food with adjectives".
You ever tried to get young, cute, large farm animals to give you money to care for people?
IIRC there was really just the one point in the heyday of Palm when you could profitably short the NASDAQ, and this was not that point.
Are there any vegans here at this point? As everyone ages, it seems like dietary preferences become much more a matter of "will this do me harm or not?"
53: now I'm imagining a Cafe Gratitude dish with a string of ten adjectives, which put in any order whatsoever would make their author sound like a maniac.
57: My niece trolled my mom by taking us there when we were in LA. It was hilarious.
56.2: Pretty sure Frowner is vegan.
I was being silly earlier when I referred to something as "vegan doctrine". But everybody know that everything I write here is both absolutely truthful and completely silly. Right?
Coated with something that people who cared would call a 'chemical'.
That would be sulfur, which isn't part of the drying process, but which is used to preserve color (keep the fruit from turning brown) and which I think has an off-putting taste.
It's possible to find both organic fruit with sulfur, and non-organic fruit without sulfur.
You know more about drying fruit than I do -- I was just speculating that there was something you could do to fruit in the drying process that would piss off people who wanted their fruit organic.
Fueling the dehydrator with whale blubber?
The best civet coffee has a civet paw floating in it.
For food, I want domestic nondomesticated pig.
For a pet, I want a domesticated domestic pig.
47: but civet coffee is produced by captive civet cats being fed coffee beans, isn't it? The captivity would be a sticking point. I doubt anyone would care if you were going through wild civet droppings looking for coffee (except insofar as that would make the price astronomically high).
65: what distinction do you think you're drawing with your different adjective orderings there?
"Domestic" meaning 2 different things in the 2 phrases?
I would read the first as "I want to eat wild boar (non-domesticated) from America (domestic)."
I would read the second as "For a pet, I want a tame animal of the species/variety that is commonly known as the 'domesticated pig'."
But if that's it it sort of undermines the point, because if they mean different things they don't necessarily correspond to the same position that would be assigned by the rule.
Yes, 69 gets it. Something like the difference between "a basket of homegrown heirloom fruits" and "a basket of heirloom indigenous fruits". And yes, 70 is right, but I wasn't really going for a perfect demonstration of the point.
Actually, 69 really meant to say, I think, "domestic pig" at the end of her second line, but I didn't pick on it.
But you would have been right to do so -- that was a typo.
70: There, I think the argument is that prior knowledge of the rule influences how the individual words are given meaning. Which is a bit of a second-order argument about the rule.
53 - a lot of pretentious restaurants now just serve a list of nouns (with no indication of what processes are applied to them).
53: Hey peep, is she single? The girls have been asking for an older brother, and that would be one easy way.
They've also given up on decimals and dollar signs.
76: My mother or my niece? I'm very confused.
In Chinese, civet coffee is called "cat shit coffee" (mao shi kafei). It still costs $15 a cup.
I was thinking, the next time someone asks me to sum up the difference between China and America in 1 sentence, I'll say that it's: Americans like food dish names to be descriptive and movie titles evocative. Chinese like their food dish names evocative and movie titles descriptive. In China, food is actually called things like Rainbow Harmonious Little Treasure (bad Chinese menu translations are overly faithful), while the Chinese title of Inception is "Pirates of the Dream space (dao meng kongjian)" and Hamlet is "the Prince's revenge plot (wangzi fuchou ji)"
Tbqh I would likely still say "indigenous heirloom fruits".
In may be wrong, but it looks like almost all the counterexamples have included an adjective that has to be stuck next to the noun no matter what, because it's not really an adjective anymore, it's part of a two-word noun phrase.
The rule is really striking. And like the use of prepositions and articles it is something that marks a non-native speaker, even if they are fluent.
78: I guess you must mean my mom, because then I could be their older brother.
So, yes! My mom is single!
I would not, because (I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong) "heirloom" as applied to fruit/veg implies a process of cultivation, not origin. If it is heirloom, it has been touched by humans. You can take an indigenous plant and groom it on an heirloom path, but I don't think you can say that an heirloom fruit or veg (which, by definition, has been cultivated) is indigenous.
81: Does "long stupid essay" sound wrong to you?
82.1 was what I meant, but really all I meant is that I enjoy adorable peep's-mom stories, of which there seem to be many.
85: Too late! My mom already accepted your proposal!
86: Oh, fantastic! She's another sprain fetishist, right? Otherwise she might not want to buy her ticket just yet.
I don't think you can say that an heirloom fruit or veg (which, by definition, has been cultivated) is indigenous.
Why in the everloving blue-eyed world not? Corn, as you may have heard, is indigenous to the new world, and so are tomatoes, and if, here in the new world, I were to cultivate indigenous cultivars of corn and tomatoes, would they somehow not be indigenous? (Perhaps not, if the particular cultivars were cultivated abroad, I guess. But, in any case, none of the fruits we actually eat are "indigenous" on this standard.)
Anyway, you now seem to be advancing a claim about whether any fruits are both heirloom and indigenous, not whether one should say "heirloom indigenous fruits" or "indigenous heirloom fruits".
What LB is getting at in 38 is semantic scope. To know what's modifying what, we have to diagram what it's scoping over:
So,
[dried [organic [nectarine]]
vs:
[[dried [organic]] nectarine]
These are actually two different structures, although I would still say the second one is non-standard English.
I think this rule is part of the reason people call those loud, messy, honky things Canadian Geese rather than Canada Geese. Bird names are pretty much two or three part nouns (Thick-billed Murre, Common Loon) which people don't realize/remember/care about.
Capitalization does make it somewhat clearer (though not in the case of birds named after countries). I got into a back and forth with an editor about capitalization because bird journals capitalize proper common names (as determined by committee (/nerds)) and non-bird journals don't. But it's really important to know if you're talking about a Redhead or a redhead. Fortunately the fish journals just changed their standards on this but I think all biology/ecology/wildlife papers should. A Polar Bear should be different than a polar bear (which could be a grizzly these days).
Heirloom, indigenous corn or banana species?
The fish journals are always leading the way in science.
I don't think you can reason through this with determinative example-pairs. More useful would be a big online survey (like the dialect thing) allowing people to rate a wide range of alternative adjective orderings as more or less natural, and analyzing the results.
88: In my mind I think there is a difference between "a fruit taken from a tree growing in its indigenous location and state" and "a fruit taken from a cultivar derived from an indigenous species", but I don't expect anyone to be thinking at that level while they are looking for their local produce at the Berkeley Farmer's Market. But I wasn't really trying to advance a new argument, I was just trying to clarify the domestic/domesticated examples by way of an analogy--which just proves that I don't belong here.
66 There's probably a good Juan Valdez joke to be made there but I suspect it's racist.
I think this rule is part of the reason people call those loud, messy, honky things Canadian Geese rather than Canada Geese. Bird names are pretty much two or three part nouns (Thick-billed Murre, Common Loon) which people don't realize/remember/care about.
IME people always think that "Canada Goose" sounds weird. I've had at least three fights on this topic, only one marital, and one that came surprisingly close to being physical.
95.last I think that just means you have to bring pastries. Or a fruit basket. Which, as it happens, does not turn out to be dried nectarines, whether organic or otherwise.
97: Try calling them "Great Norther Shitters".
I fucking love Canada Geese. They're loud, aggressive, and some of the most dinosaur-like of our modern-day dinosaurs.
So, thinking about various examples, can somebody explain to me why:
"It was a cold and windy day" (or "it was a cold, windy day")
sounds correct and
"It was a windy and cold day"
sounds incorrect?
94. Or as the Language Log reply to the inigtial observation did, cite articles that have done this analysis with a large corpus of written English.
Is vulgar thieving dark-haired socialite preferable over dark-haired thieving vulgar socialite? If one wanted to add a long nonstandard adjective, say insurance-scamming, where would that fit best?
"a fruit taken from a tree growing in its indigenous location and state" and "a fruit taken from a cultivar derived from an indigenous species"
I actually simply do not understand the purported distinction here. I mean what is "an indigenous species"? Nothing is "indigenous" sans phrase.
I further don't understand the attempt to link "indigenous" conceptually with "cultivated". Why aren't these simply orthogonal? Wild fruits can be dispersed to areas to which they are not indigenous. Corn was cultivated in America, to which it is indigenous, and then also elsewhere, in places to which it wasn't.
Certainly one can distinguish between "a wild fruit taken from a tree in an area to which it is native" and "a cultivated fruit taken from a tree cultivated in an area to which its wild ancestors were not native" but the idea that this distinction is captured by where in a list of adjectives the word "indigenous" comes is running me amok.
Probably I should just drop it, though. I'm trying not to become a self-parodic asshole. (I just adopted that resolution.)
107: What kind of asshole are you going to be instead? And do we get to order the desired adjectives or do you?
IME people always think that "Canada Goose" sounds weird. I've had at least three fights on this topic, only one marital, and one that came surprisingly close to being physical.
"The RCMP officer insisted angrily that 'Canadian Goose' was unnatural, but I could sense his arousal at my sneering defiance."
What kind of asshole are you going to be instead?
Unclear so far. It's going to be pretty new territory for me.
112: Change can be good! Opinionated Peep's Mom and I wish you the best.
113: Awwww! You two are so cute together!
90: the species of goose is Canada goose. If someone said they'd seen a Canadian goose I would assume they meant one that was native to Canada, of which there are many species.
106: In my badly conceived analogy, I made an assumption about understood omitted phrases. If you and I were standing in a park in Hong Kong and there were some Canada geese milling around, I would say (but only if I thought you didn't already know this fact), "They are native to arctic North America". But if we were standing in northern Canada, I'd say "They're native," and I think you would understand what I meant.
Whatever you call them, starting October 24, you can shoot five a day in most of Pennsylvania.
116: Then the distinction is between "a fruit taken from a tree growing in its indigenous location and state" and "a fruit taken from a cultivar derived from an indigenous [sc. to here] species", i.e., a fruit taken from a tree growing in a place to which it's indigenous, and a fruit taken from a tree growing in a place to which it's indigenous? Got it.
118: Not sure I'm seeing a new kind of asshole.
How about trying, "Aw, shucks, it's only words, what's the big deal?"
: Not sure I'm seeing a new kind of asshole.
Look closer.
Wikipedia-ing, apparently some of those birds we called Canada geese have been recently distinguished as a separate species dubbed the Cackling Goose. Too much, man.
118: Maybe link this thread to your online dating profile? I think it will help you screen out the duds.
Cackling Geese are adorable. They look like cuter Canadas.
My friend posted on Facebook that the swan ('near the flamingos') at a zoo bit and that she reported it. I wanted to be mean and ask what she expected. I can just imagine the zoo employee 'Yay dude. It's a swan. That's what they do. Sorry it looks so majestic and shit, they're actually super mean.'
Grammar debates are much more bearable if you imagine the participants being attacked by aggressive Canada Geese. Actually almost everything seems more bearable if you add in imaginary aggressive Canada Geese.
Tragicomedy grows in the strangest soil. And yes, I suppose it's better with Canada geese. (I misread 124 as "Canada geese are adorable; they look like cuter Canadas," which cheered me up.)
OT: Anybody here closer to SEK than I with any insight as to what's going (that's appropriate to share, obvs.). Facebook is making things out to be pretty dire.
I know nothing, but looking for public information, his latest tweet doesn't look good.
I'm sorry to hear that, I liked SEK but stopped following him after he stopped posting at acephalous.
Wow. FB does make it look dire. ICU? Organ transplants?
I don't know more than what's on FB. He's had a lot of health problems in the last few months, but he seemed to go from bad to dire very quickly.
Yikes. I just saw that as well. Poor guy.
loud, messy, honky things
Racist.
Very sorry to hear about SEK (yet again, poor guy can't seem to catch a break).
Unlike SEK, I have a stupid problem. Bear with me.
A friend just closed our chat by inviting me to send them some of my recent writing. In my estimation this recent writing is all too poor to share. So I should tear it up or burn it or at least set it aside and start working on things of higher quality that I can share -- right? What the hell is the point of stubbornly creaking along with the existing reams of rubbish? The quilted, lotiony sort of paper will soothe my lazy fantasist ass better than those 60 single-spaced pages. If I've learned from their literary exercises, let it be tested.
Right? This seems like a rare vindication of the "kill your darlings" advice. This is an exacting friend and anything I write with them in mind as audience will be better than the lotioned alternative. Okay no, that's going too far. It could be bad in a different way HMMM hmmm hmm.
Hong Kong nice in October, you all say? I'm delirious. The 11:30pm wake-up call is not my favorite thing.
Send your friend some of your writing, lk. Whether it's something you've already written or something new you write with them is up to you, but remember to adjust for normal self-doubt.
What teo said. Also adjust for a certain amount of abnormal self-doubt.
That all seems right. I think the self-deception here is less "abnormal self-doubt" than believing that I'm satisfied by being lazy and not pushing myself in certain ways, when that's never satisfied me before -- only soothed -- and won't make me happy now. I don't doubt that I can push myself quite a bit harder, given time and commitment. But not tonight. Sleep and thermoregulate well, you guys.
I'm kind of stuck writing things for work. "Stuck" referring to not getting the writing done, not to being assigned to write. I have a lot to document, plus some more public facing stuff. I don't know what happened. Documentation used to be something I'd just write without hesitation, even when other stuff (like papers) was always a pain.
It's been a long, long, time since I've written anything substantial, and I think it's starting to cost me.* Sometimes I wonder if I should just do all-nighters on the weekend, and grudgingly admit that I've never learned how to write any other way. I know that rationally, I should give myself a hard cut-off at midnight or so and then come back to it, but when I do that I never come back.
*Mostly in self-perception. There's a ton of stuff I think through enough to want to get some tangible result out of it, but never circulate or publish, and sometimes then forget.
On FB. Just a quick note with a Dr. Who clip to announce that he is not dead, but I guess was technically dead for a while.
It was a bit scary. I still have no idea what's wrong with him, except that he's just about well enough to post (from ICU?) and apparently needs transplants of something.
Yikes! I hope he gets better soon.
Long stupid essay is two opinions. A lot of these adjectives are semantically-speaking opinions, even when they seem to be neutral adjectives. At least, that's my opinion.
As far as maniacs go I find that I would happily take a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife-wielding maniac
Colourless green French maniacs whittle furiously.
149 is rendered invalid by the lack of an en dash.