At 08:54 AM 1/9/03 -0500, you wrote:


><aside>
>I've often wondered why we say "blue house" instead of "house blue".
>After all, the "blue" makes no sense without the context of "house".  You
>have to do a sort of mental push of blue waiting to make sense of it, then
>do a pop when the context finally comes along.  This seems intuitive to us
>because we're used to it, but if you think about it it's really backward
>and awkward.
>
>The few languages I know something about all seem to prefer the modifier
>before its context.  Are there other languages that do it the other way
>around?

French would be maison bleu (or "red mill" is moulin rouge).
Chinese and most other languages seem to put the adjective before the
noun. Japanese is supposed to put the verb at the end, which is said
to allow the speaker to feel out the response of the listener before
sticking in the appropriate verb at the end. I don't know about
adjectives (or much of anything else) in Japanese.

>Does this bias in our brain or bias acquired when language is learned make
>it hard for us to learn to explain something clearly?  Ask an 8 year old
>what he did in school that day, and you'll get a lot of details that make
>no sense because the context is missing.  In fact, in my humble
>unscientific impression, the biggest single difference between a good
>description and a bad one is that a good description builds the context
>before getting into the details.

Yes, and bridging that gap requires an empathy between the describer
and the listener that is so often lacking. Writing a general description
for a manual, for example, is so difficult because you have to visualize
every sort of person who might read it, and how they might misinterpret
or fail to understand what you are writing. It's the same thing if you
were to talk to the eight-year-old and use your university level
vocabulary. It might be educational for the kid, but it won't get the
idea across with precision. It *is* kind of fun to hear a seven-year-old
use words like "insufferable" in the correct context.

>Just wondering.  For all I know this has been hashed to death by linguists
>and psycologists.
></aside>

Probably. If this discussion goes on, it should be changed to [OT]:

Best regards,

Spehro Pefhany --"it's the network..."            "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

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