Re: OT: libraries (was Re: dialectal diversity in English)

Adam Walker scripsit:

> Are other languages as silly about the ordering of
> adjectives as English?
Well, at least the distinction between "public Swedish libraries" and
"Swedish public libraries" carries semantic information.  JRRT, when young,
wrote a story about a "green great dragon": his mother pointed out that
it had to be "great green dragon", though no reason for this is known.
In general, changing the ordering of adjectives either produces a soft
error (like "green great dragon", which is intelligible but ungrammatical),
or else changes the meaning.

--
Values of beeta will give rise to dom!          John Cowan
(5th/6th edition 'mv' said this if you tried    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
to rename '.' or '..' entries; see              jcowan@reutershealth.com
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/odd.html)

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