Tag: Linguistics
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The order of adjectives
This is a big red ball. And this is a small black cat. The point being that it would be very odd to have these adjectives in reverse order in normal circumstances. You would only say “the red big ball” if distinguishing it from a number of other big balls. It seems English speakers subconsciously…
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The Trees of Life and Language, fractals and the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
I was recently shown a picture of a bird on someone’s phone and and asked if I could identify it. From a distance, obviously a crow. Perhaps it was melanistic, I suggested. What I meant was leucistic. Which is, kind of, the opposite (I mentioned a rare melanistic female House Sparrow seen in Northumberland in…