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madmaudlingoes:
Except in your examples, [big cat] and [great dragon] are compound nouns, not noun phrases.
“A steel blackbird” is still well-formed according to the rule proposed in the graphic; “a steel, black bird” is not.
There are exceptions to this rule: “a small, nasty man” vs. “a nasty little man,” for instance. But those seem to have to do with rhythm as much as meaning.
spiderine:
… well, “brown big cat” makes sense if you’re talking about big cats (lions, tigers etc). therefore, a category of dragons could be called “great dragons” and one type, or this particular example, is green.
Moral: there is no “rule” in English - not even an unspoken rule - that does not have exceptions, because we’re bastards that way.
write-on-world:
(Your picture was not posted)
madmaudlingoes:
Except in your examples, [big cat] and [great dragon] are compound nouns, not noun phrases.
“A steel blackbird” is still well-formed according to the rule proposed in the graphic; “a steel, black bird” is not.
There are exceptions to this rule: “a small, nasty man” vs. “a nasty little man,” for instance. But those seem to have to do with rhythm as much as meaning.
spiderine:
… well, “brown big cat” makes sense if you’re talking about big cats (lions, tigers etc). therefore, a category of dragons could be called “great dragons” and one type, or this particular example, is green.
Moral: there is no “rule” in English - not even an unspoken rule - that does not have exceptions, because we’re bastards that way.
write-on-world:
(Your picture was not posted)
