Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Philosophy of English Grammar

Usually people think that English grammar is not so nuanced and if you familiarize yourself with some subject, predicate, object ok the working English is ready at hand. But it is not so. There are very many nuances in the structure of English sentences which pay attention to aspects of psychology, cognition and culture. For example the adjectives and the noun. You cannot put adjectives before nouns in haphazard manner. There is a priority and scaling spanning from right to left preceding the noun itself. There are seven such positions receding to left from the noun. An adjective of material of which the noun is composed or an adjective of origin from which the noun has come should take the immediate preceding position before the noun. Then any adjective which describes the colour; then the adjective which informs about the age; then the adjective which describes the state or condition of the noun; then the adjective of shape; then the adjective which tells about the size; then in the last place to the left comes adjectives of our opinion about the noun. Just think about the philosophical chain connecting the observer and the object. The adjectives scale from the most subjective which is nearer to the observer to the most objective which is nearer to the object - left to right. And seen otherwise from the most objective next to the noun to the most subjective near to the speaker - right to left. The chain of observation is scaled subjective to objective by the adjectives. Thank God I didn't become an English teacher ! 

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