zenosanalytic:

burntcopper:

things english speakers know, but don’t know we know.

you can totally have “green great dragons” but, it changes the meaning. “Great green dragons” would mean green dragons who are great, whereas “green great dragons” would mean Great-Dragons, a sub-class of Dragons, who are green.

And origin-material-purpose don’t need to be in that order. To use their example, a “silver French whittling knife” is the same as a “French silver whittling knife”, a “silver whittling knife from France”, as a “silver French knife for whittling” ect ect. Now, if you were to write, “a French silver knife for whittling” you’d run into some problems, as that could be read in at least 3 ways: 1) as synonymous with the other phrases, 2)as a “knife for whittling” made from “French-silver”, 3) as a French “silver-knife” made for whittling. But, as my use of the “-” here shows, English does provide a punctuation-tool which, if used properly and consistently, will subconsciously tip most English-speaking readers off as to how you mean more ambiguous phrasing to be read. By using the dash(and, obvsl, word-order/placement, which is Very Important in English; seriously, the above quote is generally right, it can completely change the meaning of words), you indicate which words are connected together, and this indicates how to read the phrase, and what it means 🙂

bramblepatch: the-real-seebs: failure-artist: the-real-seebs: mygayisshowing: the-undefeated-gaul: mygayisshowing: People who only speak english will never understand the struggle of not knowing if you have to call someone the ‘formal you’ or the ‘informal you’ considering a majority of native english speakers don’t even know the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re,’ it’s probably for the best that the language…

science-of-noise: bitterpunktrash: indielowercase: bitterpunktrash: I kinda love unconventional contractions like “mightn’t” i’m really partial to y’all’d’ve I can appreciate when contractions start to look like Lovecraftian Outer God names Y’all’dn’t’ve, Dark Contraction of the South with a Thousand Aspects

beanmom: kingfucko: gollyplot: flittering-sylph: Man I hate it when people use the pronoun “you” as a singular pronoun in an informal setting. “You” is plural, unless thou dost speak to an unfamiliar person. The correct singular second person pronoun is “thou” in most cases. Grammar never changes. Pronouns must always stay one way until the…

The bizarre syntax of ‘sexiest man alive’

allthingslinguistic:

Arika Okrent has a great article about what’s going on with the syntax of “sexiest man alive”. 

The Sexiest Man Blond? The Sexiest Man Canadian? …

Why is “alive” the only adjective that fits in this construction? Actually, there is a small set of other adjectives that also work here, and the thing they have in common is etymological history. Alive originated in the Old English phrase on life. It was a prepositional phrase, one that got reanalyzed along the way into a single word, an adjective.

The other phrases that underwent this change are on flote, an slæpe, and on waecnan. In their current forms, they work beautifully in the “Sexiest Man” construction. Really, some magazine should judge a winner for these categories too:

“Sexiest Man Afloat!”
“Sexiest Man Asleep!”
“Sexiest Man Awake!”

Adrift, formed on analogy with afloat also works, as do a few other words where the initial a- can be traced back to the meaning “on”: afire, aflame, ablaze. 

Do you like hot guys? Well, you’re gonna love the Sexiest Man Ablaze!

(Read the rest.) 

Another interesting property of a- adjectives that reminds us of their origins as prepositional phrases is that they can only be used in predicative, not attributive position. So you can say “the man is alive/afloat/asleep/awake/aflame” but not “*the alive/afloat/asleep/aflame man” (of course, you can express the same meaning with a gerundive adjective, as in “the living/floating/sleeping/flaming man”). 

The bizarre syntax of ‘sexiest man alive’

everybodyilovedies: conservative-libertarian: 221books: fuckyourwritinghabits: cornflakepizza: winchesterbr0s: hesmybrother-hesadopted: czarnoksieznik: beesmygod: “chuffed doesnt mean what you think it means” it means exactly what i think it means its just some stupid word that literally has two definitions that mean the opposite thing what the hell This makes me really chuffed This post is quite egregious Well I’m…