I largely disagree with the universality attributed to this 'rule'. It's just that different 'groupings' are usually less useful.
E.g. it is far less likely that you'd want to specify that the "green knife" entity is to be used for whittling. It is far more likely that you'd want to specify that the "whittling knife" is green.
Similarly you're unlikely to group 'lovely knife' as the most low-level entity to which you'd add higher leverl characterisations.
Some of the other ones though are reasonably interchangeable, as long as it is understood that the focus is slightly different each time.
E.g. a priceless old knife, and old priceless knife mean slightly different things, and you'd choose the order depending on whether you wanted to emphasize that the old knife happens to be priceless, as opposed to that the priceless knife happens to be old.
Exactly. I tend to think of it as relating to how tightly the adjective is bound to the word. The first adjective before the noun modifies the noun the most. The adjective before modifies that tuple. The adjective before that modifies that group, etc.
"Hand me the green knife." / "Which one? There are two: one metal and one plastic." / "The metal green knife."
"Hand me the metal knife." / "Which one? There are two: one green and one blue." / "The green metal knife."
If there were a table of several objects, many of which were green knives, only one of which were made of metal. You are standing out of arm's reach and need someone close to the table to hand you precisely the green knife that will get the job done: the metal green knife.
Take this red big fresh apple. Please note how red, fresh, and big are orthogonal, but you still can notice that something is out of order with the previous phrase.
Well, yes, but again it's about logical grouping. They're orthogonal in a narrow sense, as adjectival descriptions, but there is a logical hierarchical grouping that distinguishes between red and green apples as entities. In what everyday scenario would you need to characterise an apple in the "fresh apples" group as being specifically 'red'? It would be far more common to characterise an apple of the "red apple" variety as specifically being fresh.
> far less likely that you'd want to specify that the "green knife" entity is to be used for whittling. It is far more likely that you'd want to specify that the "whittling knife" is green.
I don't know what a whittling knife looks like, so I would be far more likely to specify that the green knife is used for whittling.
This one is trivial to learn by example and by reading through a lot of books.
What's an absolutely fucking black magic is the use of articles. The frivolity with which a's and the's are sprinkled through an average sentence is genuinely infuriating. There are rules, but "they are more like guidelines". In reality asking native speakers why they used the here, but not there typically draws blank looks. Having used English daily for over 20 years I still have to resort to A/B testing the placement (or not placement!) of articles in my head and check which option sounds "more English."
There's the StackExchange English Language Learner's board - ell.stackexchange.com; while not an English or liguistics expert, I participate there, and questions on articles are common.
- English generally wants singular nouns tagged with a determiner unless the noun is being used to refer to the type of something rather than an instance of something, or in more than a few fixed prepositional phrases.
- Determiners, including articles, signify the importance and expectation around the question "which X".
- Definite articles are a signal to the listener/reader that the they should know which X the speaker/writer means. That's all. It has nothing to do with "specificity" as often explained by others. If the listener/reader doesn't know typically they will be triggered to ask.
- The indefinite article is a signal to the listener/reader that they don't have to know or care about "which X". It will trigger a listener/reader not to ask or wonder.
- Proper nouns don't take articles because usually the question "which John?", for example, isn't a concern.
> Proper nouns don't take articles because usually the question "which John?", for example, isn't a concern.
And they do take articles when the question is a concern, in exactly the same way as other nouns. E.g., (for a highly contrived example) “The John Smith in the story of Pocahontas is not the John Smith found in a contemporary register of tradesmen in London discovered last week”.
I can basically agree with those generalizations, but in particular I've always been puzzled why British English tends to use "hospital" without any determiner, but American (really, U.S.) English almost always does. As a native US English speaker, I don't think I've heard one of my compatriots say something like "he was injured and taken to hospital." Always has "the" (without regard to the audience knowing which hospital) or "a" but I've virtually never heard an article used in British English.
I feel this one's fairly arbitrary, but "taken to hospital" at least lines up with how we talk about other public places in a generic, consumer-of-public-services sense in British English. Besides "taken to hospital", you can be "at university", "on your way to school", or "in prison", for example.
If you worked at one of those institutions, though, you'd add an article and be specific - you work "at the university" or "at the hospital". (You'd expect the listener to infer that you mean the specific university/hospital in the area, assuming there is only one.)
Edit: More colloquially, we also have "going into town" (no article, even though it's probably a specific town that is clear from context!)
The article-less usage only seems to work for generic places (hospital/school/prison/university). It doesn't belong with a noun that refers to a person but also sort-of-refers to that person's place of business. You're "going to the doctor" or "the dentist" or "the hairdresser" - never "going to doctor". This is despite the specificity often being superfluous here - the listener might not know/care which dentist you use!
It's not arbitrary at all, at least in my dialect. "He went to hospital" and "he went to the hospital" mean different things. The first implies that he was a patient, he was there for the purpose for which the hospital exists, the second implies he went to that location for some other reason (such as bringing flowers, or working there).
Likewise "went to school" (as a scoolchild) vs "went to the school" (to collect someone, or to teach). "At university" (a student) vs "at the university" (physical location, for any reason). "Went to prison" (as a criminal) vs. "went to the prison" (to visit his brother, or to fix their telephones). "Does she go to church?" (to church services) vs. "did you go to the church?" (to see the stained glass).
"Go to the doctor" is a bit different, the doctor isn't an institution, he's a person. Although I think that implies you went for medical reasons, if you stopped by to pick up some paperwork, you might say "I have to stop at the doctor's" i.e. his rooms. But maybe that's also because you would probably talk to the receptionist anyway. But "went to the barber" implies you had a shave, while you might "stop at the barber's" to pick someone up.
School, university, and prison are all institutions. Stay in school, go to university, stay out of prison.
You don't go to store though, hang out at mall, meet at restaurant, or go to bar for a drink.
I think the difference between the two usages is considering "hospital" an institution.
I also don't think a vs the requires the listener to know which specific place you're talking about, it seems to also communicate that the speaker knows what place they're talking about. "I'm going to the store to buy carrots" vs "I'm going to a store to buy carrots." Someone knows vs no one knows.
Coming from another language that uses articles to English, I don't generally find the rules that difficult. It's probably a case of it being very hard to internalize a grammatical category that just doesn't exist in your native language(s) .
For example, for me it was very hard initially to get used to always explicitly putting in the subject of a sentence, because i my native language the subject is often implied (our verbs vary a lot more than in English, so saying 'I wash the dishes' - 'eu spăl vasele' instead of 'wash the dishes' - 'spăl vasele' is redundant, the verb form already tells you it's me who is doing the washing).
The rules aren't the problem, it's them not being applied consistently that is.
Look at French - exact same idea, but consistently used, so it's a piece of cake to learn. English in comparison is just... PRNG. Here you need them, here you don't, unless you do, but it would still sound better if they weren't here.
the carries with it the implication of (о чем я уже говорил) or (вы знаете уже какой)
a means один _____ (но может быть вы не знаете кокой)
Ø (no article) means the noun is probably abstract.
-----BREAK BREAK-----
Where you might get all twisted up and confused is with concrete collective/uncountable nouns. These are exceptions and work very differently. Examples are: pizza, foliage, pasta, people, etc. You simply have to memorize them.
the still means the X that has a clear referent because we have already discussed it or it's clear from surrounding context
a can be one of two things:
- a countable quantity of an uncountable noun, e.g., "a pizza" usually means "a unit of pizza; a pizza pie"
- shorthand for a type of or category of an uncountable noun, e.g., "linguine is a pasta" means "linguine is a type of pasta"
I'm trying to think of a counter example but the golden rule for a and the is specificity. "A" refers to any thing and "the" refers to a particular thing. Notice I used any thing instead of anything: now that is quite hard to explain.
"The book rested on a shelf" and "a book rested on a shelf". You use a or the if you want to draw attention to one or the other or even both. It depends on context. The book I mentioned earlier rests on the top shelf. The top shelf is above another shelf. The other shelf is the middle shelf. If there were lots of sets of shelves then the middle shelf would be a middle shelf, unless I want to call attention to it, then it is the middle shelf. A red toy lorry lies on the middle shelf. The red lorry has a black steering wheel. The steering wheel is broken.
Do you have any examples? When I try to think of one in my head (admittedly, not trying very hard), it always comes down to a simple "_the_ if you're talking about a specific one, _a_ otherwise", which I'm assuming is not comprehensive.
Many times abstract nouns can omit or include the article and still be correct, the article adds specificity and sometimes it's required to be "more correct" grammar but many ESL kids don't see enough counterexamples to learn the "rule".
"These are times that try men's souls" vs. "These are the times that try men's souls."
"I need answers" vs. "I need the answers"
"I have fear that .." vs. "I have a fear that .."
Native English speakers "know" which "sound better"; many ESL kids simply do not.
Each of those pairs you present sound equally correct out of context (though in one case one is a familiar quote), but in each pair the examples have different semantics and each would sound better in different specific contexts (and sometimes they would sound equally correct even in context but have slightly different meaning, at least in connotation.)
Many languages express the verb "to fear" as "to have fear" (tener miedo, avoir peur) so to insert an article ("I have a fear" ...") becomes almost psychologically problematic, it's "unlearning" plus learning.
Or you can side step the issue by avoiding chaining together long lists of adjectives.
You're spot on with the articles though. When coming from a language like Japanese that doesn't have articles the using "a" and "the" correctly is maddening.
And, on the general theme, the Bulgarian rules for using definite articles are closer to the French rather than to the English rules (I'm fluent in French and English, learning Bulgarian ;)).
I'm not going to try for a Bulgarian example of the difference, but here's an English vs French one
"A Paris, les oranges ont l'air ..."
"In Paris, oranges appear ..."
One could possibly add a definite article to the English sentence, but one definitely cannot remove it from the French one.
I'm not a linguist, but I believe there is a direct relation between the French article and the Bulgarian one - Bulgarian articles are characteristic of the Balkan sprachbund[0], likely influenced by medieval Romanian, a romance language.
Absolutely this. I believe researchers themselves don't actually know how exactly the article system works. The best understanding we have involves handwavy things like "cognitive framing", "semantic maps" etc, and nothing clear enough to actually teach English learners.
Except, that phrase sounds better without 'the' (ie: "With a background in Hungarian and German I don't have any difficulties with articles."). Bojler eladó.
I presume the distinction between definite and indefinite articles aren't the problem -- is it the usage of 'a' vs 'an' that's problematic?
AIUI if the word sounds like it starts with a vowel sound, it's an an. If not, it's an a.
I have to say a word (or abbreviation, or acronym) out loud very occasionally to determine if 'an' is appropriate -- and reading the writing of North American english speakers throws me when an 'an' is used in front of a word that, in my head, starts with a consonant sound.
The obvious example being 'an herb' - because in Australia (and indeed England) the h is pronounced, consequently it would normally be 'a herb'.
There are minor mental flurries with abbreviations that some people pronounce differently, I'm sure.
Yeah, as a native English speaker. Articles are among the many things I often tweak when I do a final pass through something I've written. And, if you were looking over my shoulder and asked "Why?" about the changes, a lot of the time I'd probably shrug and say "It sounds better" or "It flows better."
The book’s example is not the best.
Green great dragons can absolutely exist, if great dragons were a breed of dragons, like great danes.
In that case great would be a way more specific modifier of the noun dragons, as it defines a subgroup of the group of the noun.
That’s why it can be closer, because it’s more specific than green, and our brain can definitively switch automatically to get this nuance in language, as soon as we asses that “great dragons” are a thing. It’s not about size and color in itself, it’s just that, generally speaking, size tends to be less specific than color in subgrouping a noun.
This is also how we learn though trust: if I find the sentence and I trust who wrote that, I assume and therefore learn that Great Dragons are probably a breed of dragons.
That specific example probably originates from Tolkien.
J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography:
> When [Tolkien] was about seven he began to compose his own story about a dragon. ‘I remember nothing about it except a philological fact,’ he recalled. ‘My mother said nothing about the dragon, but pointed out that one could not say “a green great dragon”, but had to say “a great green dragon”. I wondered why, and still do. The fact that I remember this is possibly significant, as I do not think I ever tried to write a story again for many years, and was taken up with language.’
"Can't exist" doesn't mean "there's no way to make a valid sentence out of those words", it means "it'll sound wrong to native speakers".
I remember the scientific paper that included the phrase "I smoke crack rocks" in the sentence "we observed vaporized iodide (I) erosion on soil in an experiment where we saw I smoke crack rocks.
The point being that, if you hear someone say ‘a green great dragon’, you understand the speaker to be referring to a kind of dragon called a ‘great dragon’. Because, to make sense in that order, ‘great’ can’t be merely a reference to the speaker’s opinion about the dragon (‘it’s grrrreat!’) or the size of it (‘great big enormous’), but instead a qualifier for a kind of dragon.
That you can infer that ‘great’ connotes something different because of its position in the adjective sequence is an argument in favor of the idea that the sequencing is semantically meaningful, not against it.
The thing with English grammar is that it's very malleable. And exception-ridden. In this particular case, the specificity of what you're describing is important as well.
> absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife
For instance, "An expensive, peaty fifteen year old Scotch" is a potential counter-example, because [fifteen year old scotch] is the specific item you're talking about.
"Barman, a peaty large|double Scotch for me please" would also be a counterexample, I think, because the key here is that you want a [large|double Scotch]. Large and Double are both size descriptors for a bar drink in different parts of the world.
And I'm not seeing why "I received a hand-painted wooden Native-American jewellery box as a present" would somehow be wrong, if I wanted to emphasize the origin, over "I received a hand-painted Native-American wooden jewellery box as a present".
Agreed, but following the rule produces a good sentence. These adjectives are only origin and material, so "a Native American hand painted wooden jewelry box" seems perfectly fine to me.
This illustrates that we teach languages "wrong" or rather that we don't take advantage of the innate part of the brain that children use to learn their primary language.
My pet theory is that it isn't a decline of brain ability but rather a psychological shift: Adults expect results, get frustrated more quickly, can't tolerate speaking "silly" for long etc.
> My pet theory is that it isn't a decline of brain ability but rather a psychological shift: Adults expect results, get frustrated more quickly, can't tolerate speaking "silly" for long etc.
Totally agree. An adult working full time on acquiring a language can learn to use a foreign language at an adult level within maybe a year or so. It's just that nobody does that, because there are other things to do...
Children literally need decades to reach an adult level of competence in their native language, despite 24/7 immersion.
Language learning techniques for adults (studying abstract grammar, cramming vocabulary) are very effective and kids don't learn the way.
There is one major disadvantage that adults have though, and that's at acquiring correct pronunciation. I think I've never met a person in my life who didn't learn a language from a very young age and who didn't sound slightly off to a native speaker.
There might be the rare exceptional talent who can do that, but to a first approximation it's not possible as an adult anymore.
> An adult working full time on acquiring a language can learn to use a foreign language at an adult level within maybe a year or so. It's just that nobody does that, because there are other things to do...
...
> There is one major disadvantage that adults have though, and that's at acquiring correct pronunciation. I think I've never met a person in my life who didn't learn a language from a very young age and who didn't sound slightly off to a native speaker.
I think an adult working full-time on their pronunciation would get within the native range of variation fairly quickly. Even native speakers only adjust their accent very slowly after moving to a new area, but accent coaches can speed up that process a lot. It's just that it involves a lot of tedious practice consciously controlling your tongue when you'd rather just speak freely and have your subconscious take care of tongue movement. So most people who do that are actors or public speakers, for whom pronunciation matters a great deal. The average language learner has better things to do...
> I think an adult working full-time on their pronunciation would get within the native range of variation fairly quickly.
I'd be interested in learning more about how to do that! I don't think I've ever seen it in real life.
Consider for example what it would sound like if you made a wild grammatical mistake in your native language, or completely misused some word. You wouldn't sound like a foreign speaker, but sloppy, tired, or maybe like you were making some sort of joke. I wouldn't even know where to start in order to get to that level in a second language.
I think the biggest thing is just having someone explain the tongue positions and differences - otherwise, most people do notice that there is something different between how they speak and how natives speak, but can't put their fingers on it.
For example, in my native language we don't have the 'th' sounds from English. Most learners approximate the voiceless 'th' with 'f' ('fing', 'frow') and the voiced 'th' with 'z' ('zis fing', 'zat fing'), because they don't even know what to do to pronounce the real sound.
Even worse, many consonants and vowels have variations between languages even when they are recognized as the same consonant. R is a famous case, but for example, the Slavic and Latin 't' sound is harder than the English or German 't' - I pronounce my native t with my tongue closer to my teeth than when I'm speaking English.
However, one someone points out the specific differences and helps you practice the right tongue movements, it's generally easy to replicate if you're pacient and try for a while. There may be exceptions, like learning to roll your R sounds, to vary pitch or learning click sounds (haven't tried any of these myself, so maybe they're not that hard either).
There is extensive research going back many decades that strongly implicates the role of perception in the difficulty that second language learners have with pronunciation.
Basically, learners have a tendency to hear the second language through the phonological 'filter' of the first language. They assign incoming speech sounds to categories based on the cues that are used in their first language rather than the second language, so they actually perceive the sounds in a different way from native speakers. This is a concept known as categorical perception. For example, Japanese learners of English tend to perceive English /l/ and /r/ as the same sound and cannot discriminate them reliably in perception experiments. Therefore, we can speculate that they have trouble producing the sounds differentially because they don't actually hear a difference between them.
So, the first step in overcoming pronunciation issues is not necessarily to teach tongue positions, but to train perception.
A similar problem is when the other language has a sound that is very similar, but not exactly the same as in your language. For example, if the other language has the same set of wovels, except some of them sound slightly different. As a foreign learner, you are likely to pronounce (and probably also hear) it as exactly the same as in your native language.
That is, just like it is difficult to distinguish between "their X" and "their Y", it is also difficult to distinguish between "your X" and "their X". Maybe even more difficult, because no one tells you that the difference exists.
> For example, Japanese learners of English tend to perceive English /l/ and /r/ as the same sound and cannot discriminate them reliably in perception experiments.
I wonder what would happen if you took a group of Japanese people, taught them how to make the /l/ and /r/ sounds, by telling them how to place the toungue etc., and them told one of them to choose and make one of these sounds, and the other one to guess which one it was.
I mean, just like it is easier for one non-native English speaker to understand another non-native English speaker, because they speak more slowly and carefully, maybe it would be easier for one Japanese person to understand another Japanese person's pronounciation of /l/ and /r/, because it would be more exaggerated.
It’s also entirely possible to never figure out the proper tongue positions when you are learning your native language. Instead of an “accent” you then have a “speech impediment”.
I grew up with a couple, I had some special instruction in high school to correct the fact that I said my R’s with the same mouth positions used for W’s; I also had a persistent issue with saying “tr” as a mushy kind of “ch” on one side of my mouth that I only finally corrected in, like, my mid-forties.
And yeah, once I looked up how to properly pronounce that “tr” it didn’t take too long to fix it.
Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking of when I said that certain sounds are probably harder to get right than others - R and S/TH being the two most common I believe. I'm not sure if this is the same thing as not recognizing how to pronounce a foreign language, or if it is more related to other speech impediments, such as stuttering.
I really don't think that's it to be honest. I'm talking about the difference between an expert level speaker of a second language and a native speaker of that language.
Getting basic phonology right happens way before you get to that problem.
Do you know an example of someone who has learned a second language and sounds indistinguishable from a native speaker to a native speaker? I don't, but would be curious to hear about counterexamples. I suspect maybe people who speak professionally (e.g., actors as GP suggested) might be candidates, but I don't know any...
You are right, I probably over-sold it a bit. Yes, becoming indistinguishable from a native speaker is a pretty high bar, though having a fairly non-descript accent I think is achievable.
For cases of non-native speakers mastering an accent, one anecdote I heard of was Hugh Laurie's audition tape for the role of Dr House. The story goes that the producers of the show considered it extremely important to have the character be played such that he was quintessentially American, and were very happy with the audition tape from Hugh Laurie, who convinced them on this front - only to meet him later and be shocked at his native RP accent.
The Swedish researchers Kenneth Hyltenstam and Niclas Abrahamsson have a series of studies looking at immigrants in Sweden who began learning Swedish as adults and who are judged to be native speakers by true native speakers who heard their speech.
In one study, they gave a very thorough battery of linguistic tests to these adult learners, and for some of them, the only test they failed to perform equal to native speakers was on their knowledge of proverbs and idioms.
The place you're most likely to find such near-native speakers is in immigrant communities.
Cool, that literature is pretty much exactly what I've been looking for.
Without having looked at the precise methodological details, it seems to broadly support my point, though:
"Our findings lead us to the conclusions that the rare nativelike adult learners sometimes observed would all turn out to be exceptionally talented language learners with an unusual ability to compensate for maturational effects and, consequently, that their nativelikeness per se does not constitute a reason to reject the critical period hypothesis."
(By critical period and maturational effect they refer to the hypothesis that age determines, or influences, whether you'll be able to attain a native-like level.)
Setting aside their interpretation of the results, which is a bit heatedly contested (and I believe they were focused more on syntax rather than speech), there are really two questions to ask that I think are relevant to the discussion:
1) Is it POSSIBLE for the speech of an adult language learner to be indistinguishable from a native speaker?
2) If (1) is true, are such instances common?
The reason (1) is important to ask is because a strict critical period hypothesis may rule this out by saying once the brain has matured beyond a certain point (age ~12, for example, or possibly younger for phonology), you can no longer acquire a language to the extent of a native speaker.
But there is plenty of evidence that (1) is true. In the Hyltenstam and Abrahamsson literature, they are able to find quite a few learners whose speech is indistinguishable from that of native speakers. They then run a battery of more strict tests (syntax/knowledge tests IIRC) against these learners that reveal slight differences.
However, (2) is certainly false. It's somewhat rare to find an adult learner who truly sounds like a native speaker. That, however, isn't evidence in favor of a strict critical period/maturational effects hypothesis, since there can be many reasons for failure.
My intuition is that there is much less support for a strict critical period hypothesis these days. Most people now talk about a 'sensitive period', which reflects that there are a broad range of factors that favor successful acquisition in children but that adults have decreased sensitivity to.
I know one guy who has a hobby/obsession to learn perfect English pronounciation. (English English, not American English.) Seems to me he did a great job. I am not a native speaker, so my opinion probably doesn't matter much here, but at least I can say he sounds quite different from other people who have English as a second language.
Knowing how much time and money he spent to achieve this goal, it seems to me like a complete waste of time and money. Apparently, his opinion differs. But his example makes me believe that the goal is attainable... but also explains why most people don't do it.
>Adults expect results, get frustrated more quickly, can't tolerate speaking "silly" for long etc
This is why, whenever I discuss language learning with people, I said, "Fluency is overrated. Learn as much as you can, at your own pace, for as long as you enjoy doing it." There are cognitive benefits to language learning beyond being able to speak fluently.
Yes. I think learning rules is mostly helpful to bootstrap you enough to be able to pick things up naturally, and to enable you to use dictionaries and analyse your mistakes.
Studying grammar is studying the building blocks of what defines the way think about reality —- language.
The article calls stickler anyone who’s interested in the intricacies of grammar. Multiple times.
It's cute how you resolve (!) a debate that encompasses linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, neurology, and maybe a couple other sciences with a single link to some TED talk.
>>a rectangular silver French old little lovely whittling green knife
I am not a native English speaker but there is a sense of something odd about this description. But (I am always confused about starting with but) I would not think anything is wrong with "a lovely old little green rectangular French silver whittling knife".
I had a team mate who always used passive voice in technical documentation. My manager always used to point it out to him but he was never able to fix it. Once he got mad and said, "Ma'am, I have no idea what you are talking about, this is the only voice I know". On his next Birthday she gifted him a copy of Lynn Truss' Eats Shoots & Leaves. He later said that was the best book gift he ever got.
Not sure why your mate's manager had a problem with passive voice. Passive voice is often the correct choice in documentation. Passive voice emphasizes the doing, not the doer. People usually don't care about who did the doing in technical documents.
As a native Swedish speaker, I tend to follow Swedish documentation writing rules even when I write English. In particular, one should always use passive voice, and also avoid terms such as "you".
In other words, write "How to achieve X", rather than "How do I do X"?
The point I want to make is that when I write documentation, and change the latter to the former, most people seem to agree it's better.
Disagree. Pervasive passive voice is an obfuscating irritant. In a description of a multi-step procedure, IMO better to switch to "you". It clearly flags actions for the reader to take. Keepin' it clear & simple.
> "a lovely old little green rectangular French silver whittling knife"
As a native speaker, but without any editorial training, this feels slightly off to me. My first edit would be something like "a lovely little old", because "lovely little" feels like it should go together. Whether that's due to alliteration or "little old lady" being a not uncommon phrase, I couldn't say for sure.
I'm with you on that one. I'd say, for example, "We went to a lovely little park", rather than "a little lovely park." The second sounds wrong for some reason.
Not a native speaker, but "a little lovely" kinda sounds like an opposite to "much lovely".
That is, my parsing of "a little lovely park" is ambiguous between "a little (lovely park)" and "a (little lovely) park". With "a lovely little park" there is no ambiguity.
So if it's "opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose noun", why would you say "the big bad wolf", but also "the bad old days"? In the latter, 'bad' is acting as opinion. But what's it doing in the former? Purpose?
I believe the correct answer is related to specificity, ie what is most important to what you’re communicating.
To borrow some parentheses, (the big (bad wolf)) highlights the character of the wolf as being more important than it’s shape. However (the smelly (bad meat)) emphasises the bad-ness, or rotten-ness, of the meat and further describes it as smelly.
Similarly the focus of (the bad (old days)) the past, and bad is acting as an adjective for (old days).
" he dismantles the commonly held English spelling mantra ”I before E except after C.” It’s used to help people remember how to spell words like “piece,” but, Forsyth says, there are only 44 words that follow the rule, and 923 that don’t. His prime examples? “Their,” “being,” and “eight.”"
But of course, the rule is "i before e except after c or when sounded like a, as in neighbor and weigh".
You still have exceptions like seize and weird (and being) but I think that's all among common words.
The rule is also meant for words where it's not clear because the two letters make one sound, not the ones where the "e" and "i" make distinct sounds, so that drops out another good chunk of these exceptions.
This is about order of specificity. The more vague is the adjective, the further it is from the noun. Also, the closer the adjective is to the noun, the more it modifies its meaning like "french kiss".
Because it is usually something like young/old which could be subjective. I'm of the opinion that those two could be swapped in some cases, but I'm not native speaker and can't defend the opinion with facts.
E.g. it is far less likely that you'd want to specify that the "green knife" entity is to be used for whittling. It is far more likely that you'd want to specify that the "whittling knife" is green.
Similarly you're unlikely to group 'lovely knife' as the most low-level entity to which you'd add higher leverl characterisations.
Some of the other ones though are reasonably interchangeable, as long as it is understood that the focus is slightly different each time.
E.g. a priceless old knife, and old priceless knife mean slightly different things, and you'd choose the order depending on whether you wanted to emphasize that the old knife happens to be priceless, as opposed to that the priceless knife happens to be old.