Pedro doesn’t care much for doing tricks right now.
In yesterday morning’s open thread, p.a. (First!) mentioned this BBC article about Matthew Anderson’s tweet about Mark Forsyth’s claim (I think this sentence has gotten away from me) in his book “The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase” that:
As Mark Liberman and his commenters point out at Language Log, Forsyth’s rule – a fixed order of adjectives from which an English speaker can never depart without sounding like Donald Trump on a meth and moonshine bender – is mostly bollocks. Beware of anyone who tells you that there are any unbreakable rules in English – a language which has fifteen different kinds of exceptions from every purported rule, just to fuck off the foreigners.
The reality is much more interesting and complex than Forsyth’s unbreakable rule – yes, we tend to use adjectives in a particular order, but we also swap them around depending on what idiom we are using, what effect we are trying for, what particular meaning we are trying to convey. “Grumpy old drunk lady” is subtly different to “Drunk, grumpy old lady”, although perhaps not when she’s pressed up in your face and breathing booze at you. Most of us would say “ugly little hands” but “big ugly hair”. We take pleasure in the leaping, lilting rhythm of words like “tiny fingered, cheeto-faced, ferret wearing shitgibbon” or “limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea” – even if that “slow” (being, I suspect, opinion under Forsyth’s Rule) should really go in front of all those colours, and definitely not in the middle of them, unless you want to sound like a maniac, Mr Thomas.
There’s a lot of good stuff in the Language Log thread, including links to some very interesting articles.
Shorter Jonah Goldberg: Why is the Main Stream Media not talking about how it’s ok to refuse to make a Trump 2016 cake for a 17 year old girl?
Joel
Basement Jaxx. There’s a name that I haven’t heard in a while.
Along those lines: Etienne de Crecy.
Schlemazel
I have not read the story as I can’t care enough about it but why would someone refuse to make a Drumpf cake? It seems like a silly thing to worry about as well as bad business.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel: Cooties, gotta watch out for the cooties.
Amir Khalid
@Schlemazel:
The birthday girl will get to vote for this first time this year, so she was planning an 18th birthday party with her candidate of choice as the theme. The bakery worker thought the phrase “Trump 2016” was under copyright, apparently.
ETA: I can definitely imagine the Donald charging the kid a fee to put the phrase on her birthday cake.
Schlemazel
@Amir Khalid:
Ah but of course the wingnuts won’t believe that. I would have done it anyway, he is not likely to complain about it.
OTOH I do pity that poor ignorant kid. ( did I get those adjectives in the right order?)
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
It would be helpful if there were an adjective-order rule like that, but if there really is and we were taught it, then I forgot it long ago.
Similarly with adverbs, for me anyway.
“9:35 last Tuesday morning, a cold, windy, damp and overcast day in the broken city, drunken old Aunt Jada stumbled quickly (considering her state) down the crumbling sidewalk to the dilapidated streetcar stop. Glancing around to see if anyone was watching, she bent over to pull up her knee-high stockings and was surprised to find a crisp new $50 bill on the broken concrete. On the backside was written in red capital letters, “Call 998-523-6782 for more information”. What’s this about? she thought as she trembled almost (but not quite) imperceptibly from the lack of alcohol, and considered what to do…” ;-)
Thanks for the pointer. It looks like I may have to add another browsing place.
Cheers,
Scott.
Schlemazel
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Ok dammit! I want the rest of that story now
OzarkHillbilly
Ok, so is it, “that fucking little brat” or “that little fucking brat”?
Belafon
Your example kind of proves the original point:
Note, that in order to rearrange the adjectives, you had to introduce a comma, forcing a mental stop.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Belafon: “Dirty old magazines” vs “old dirty magazines”.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
How does Jonah Goldberg have a job writing anywhere? I mean, yeah, I know it’s the national Review–but still…
Peale
@OzarkHillbilly: definitely not fucking that little brat, though. That’ll get you into sent upstate by the prosecutors very quickly.
Major Major Major Major
“Tiny fingered, cheeto-faced, ferret wearing shitgibbon” is kind of a lousy example, being opinion-opinion-opinion-opinion/noun.
@Belafon: @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Noun phrases like “dirty magazine” don’t count, in this consideration. I also think it’s funny that this whole thing includes that Tolkein example, since any RPG player can tell you there is, in fact, such a thing as a green great dragon.
OzarkHillbilly
@Peale: Yeah, good catch.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Major Major Major Major: The dirty magazines was something a non-native speaker brought up as confusing when this made the rounds on Facebook a few days ago.
Agree on the great dragons.
OzarkHillbilly
@Major Major Major Major:
Well, it’s a little over the top insulting to shitgibbons, but other than that it’s perfectly factual.
MattF
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Language Log is excellent. Mark Liberman and Victor Mair are the most frequent front-pagers, Geoffrey Pullum makes an occasional bad-tempered contribution. All interesting, and an expert set of commenters as well.
MattF
Speaking of blogs, Charles Stross’s blog (the novelist, if you didn’t know) has some very entertaining posts and commentary. The most recent invites commenters to name historical figures whose unusual lives make fiction seem tame.
Hillary Rettig
>Pedro doesn’t care much for doing tricks right now.
I’d still vote for him!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Schlemazel: :-) Thanks. Someone else is going to have to run with it to finish it. Be my guest!
Cheers,
Scott.
Raven
The dog rolled over and wagged! What’s he supposed to do, write War and Peace? ?
philadelphialawyer
Beware of anyone claiming that they have found some sort of overlooked universal “key” to any well studied subject.
On the cake thing, politics and political party are not protected categories under the law in all or most States. Nor under Federal law. Sexual orientation is not a protected category under Federal law, but it is under some State laws. Which is why the rule on “gay wedding cakes” varies by State.
On the deeper, moral issue, being a Republican is not something that has historically been the basis for widespread discrimination. Republicans, unlike racial, religious and sexual orientation minorities, and woman, are not a persecuted group.
The same reason why there is no outrage over the denial of the Trump cake is the reason why this type of discrimination is not illegal in the first place.
You hear this kinda crap over and over again from GOP’ers and libertarians….”Wadda about Spike Lee?…Does he have to make a movie for the Klan if they want him to? No? Why not, its the same thing?….REVERSE DISCRIMINATION!!11!!!”
Um no, asshole, it isn’t. For one thing, Spike Lee is NOT open to the general public. He doesn’t make movies for hire to begin with. For another, as in this case, politics is not a legally protected category. And, that, in turn, and most importantly, is because Black folks, gay people and women have actually, ya’ know, suffered widespread, debilitating discrimination, and that’s why the legislature has made it illegal. Whereas being a Klansman or a Republican has not been the basis for any such discrimination.
But if I had my way, ALL businesses open to the public would be subject to “common carrier” rules, meaning that they have to serve all comers. I actually think the baker should be required to make the Trump cake (and the Clinton Cake, Stein cake, etc.), but that isn’t the law now, and there is a good reason for it. And, of course, that is the last thing the GOP’er and libertarians want. Bakers, as things stand now, actually have the all important “freedom” to NOT make a Trump cake (or a Clinton cake, etc). Why is that a problem for them, who supposedly think that is a good thing?
Feathers
Reading that article was fascinating, but I instantly cringed thinking of people who will now bark at people who say shape before size that they are breaking a RULE. A RULE. What is wrong with you!!!
Yes, a group that I am very fond of has allowed several people who get off on shaming others for transgressions they’ve learned about on the internet to run amok. Wish they would move to the burbs, join a HOA and leave us alone.
catclub
@Feathers: So he set about on his way to the great grey green greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees, to ask the Crocodile what he ate for breakfast.
The Elephant’s Child.
MazeDancer
Thank you for that Basement Jaxx vid. YouTube also seems to have the rest of the 2011 concert. Will be working through those. Fabulous.
nonynony
Sweeping claims like this are what happens when editorial advice about writing a good sentence that flows well becomes transformed into prescriptivist nonsense in the mind of the writer.
It’s good editorial advice to follow this pattern and for most sentences if you speak it out loud you’ll find that you do this naturally. But as Mark Lieberman points out it’s far from universal, you can always find exceptions, and telling someone that they’re wrong because they came up with something different is more often than not stupid unless they’re specifically looking for writing advice – and even there context matters.
And frankly the advice given to poor Tolkien by his mother is nonsense. Whether he’s talking about a “great green dragon” or a “green great dragon” depends entirely on what the 7 year old had in mind. If it’s a dragon in the category of “great dragons” that happened to be green then it’s a “green great dragon”. If it’s a dragon in the category of “green dragons” that happened to be gigantic then it’s a “great green dragon”. From this fantasy gamer’s perspective that particular example is jarringly bad because either could be appropriate – and show how language changes based on the context it is spoken/written in.
exregis
It’s not a rule. It’s what people do. I recall a PBS show (with Steven Pinker) titled “Big, Red Balloon,” attempting to show that children learn language without being explicitly taught. In particular, the TV show asked a bunch of kids how to say the title and none of them offered “red big balloon.”
I tested this on a bunch of kids I knew, as young as three years old, and a couple of Italians just learning English and both all the kids and the two teenagers said “big, red balloon.” At a later time, while teaching a graduate computer science course on natural language processing, I mentioned Chomsky’s theories and the big, red balloon anecdote. I was surprised to learn that the foreign (non-English speaking) students told me that they learned the “quantity before quality” rule in English class. None of my American students had any idea of this grammatical notion.
philadelphialawyer
@exregis: Um, if the title of the show was “Big, Red Balloon,” why would any of the children say “red, big balloon” when they were asked what the title was? If a child was given a balloon that was red and big (or big and red, if you please), and asked to describe it, and uniformly said “big, red balloon,” then, sure, I guess the notion of big before red as being somehow more “natural” has some credence. But the kids merely parroting back the pre existing title of the show doesn’t really prove much at all, for my money.
Also, first you say:
“It’s not a rule. It’s what people do.”
But then you say that ESL students “learn[]…this rule in English class.” And go on to call it a “grammatical notion.”
Which is it, then, in your view? A rule of grammar, or just “what people do?”
I’m not convinced it’s either.