Language desk
< May 17	<< Apr \| May \| Jun >>	May 19 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

May 18

Multiple adjectives

Why does "A blue round wooden big table" grate on my nerves but "big blue round wooden table" is fine? Why is there only one specific sequence that works and deviating from it so jarring? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:53, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No answer, but very interestingly I too find the first one very grating, but the second one not at all. I wonder if it's different for different people. Perhaps the alliteration of big blue in the second one is subconsciously appealing? 131.251.254.154 (talk) 13:08, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

English, like other languages, has grammatical rules governing adjective order. Marco polo (talk) 13:23, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There are a few links to non-WP resources scattered in this previous ref-desk thread on the topic. Deor (talk) 18:56, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah-- thats how you can tell if English is the writer's native language. Eg Joseph Conrad wasnt English.--86.179.251.18 (talk) 20:59, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just as an aside, "the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River" is perhaps the best use of multiple adjective in the English language. DuncanHill (talk) 21:09, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Heart of Darkness? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:56, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah but with the alliteration, it would work in most combinations.--86.179.251.18 (talk) 21:58, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Jack, I'm disappointed! It's The Elephant's Child of course. It's not just the alliteration, the internal rhymes (great grey, green greasy) lift it. DuncanHill (talk) 22:13, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've been disappointing people all my life. Why should you be any different, Duncan? What right do complete strangers have to have unrealistic expectations of me? You don't know how grievously I've suffered ... :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:05, 19 May 2015 (UTC) [reply]

",,,all set about with fever trees". Probably its a cultural thing, but here in the UK, anybody not brought up with the Just So Stories had a seriously deprived childhood. Alansplodge (talk) 16:23, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We colonials are too busy shaking off the shackles of our masters and finding our own place in the world, to be too concerned with reliving the glories of past conquests of far-off lands and the cultural patrimony thereof. However, we were exposed to Kim at school, and to Kipling's characters in boy scouts. I saw and briefly browsed Just So Stories many times in the library, but it always seemed too daunting to take home and read (says he, who read 1984 in one late-night sitting at age 11 or 12). My favourite 2nd hand bookshop is having a half-price sale, so I wandered in yesterday and there was Kipling's complete verse, just demanding to be bought. I browsed through it when I got home, and I was surprised at how many of his poems I had forgotten I knew. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:08, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please do give the Just So Stories a bash. When I re-read them as an adult not too long ago, I laughed out loud at some passages, particularly The Beginning of the Armadillos . Some parts, such as How the Leopard Got His Spots are best viewed through 19th century glasses - 21st century ones might find them somewhat racist, but on the whole it's rather wonderful. Start here; the elephant, the armadillo and the first letter are the best bits. Alansplodge (talk) 22:52, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Alan, do try the Just So Stories - OUP do a handy edition with notes in their World's Classics series. Part two of Merrow Down, which closes How the Alphabet was Made is Kipling's grief for his daughter Josephine. DuncanHill (talk) 12:07, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If and only if

The first time I heard of this phrase was in math class. However, I also encountered it in non-math contexts, in which the usage seemed ambiguous.

Example:

You may have dessert, if and only if you promise to do your chores.

In the above example, "if and only if" seems to be used for emphasis on the first if. In math, the sentence just does not make any sense.

If you promise to do your chores, then you may have dessert.
If you may have dessert, then you promise to do your chores.

I am extremely hesitant of using ambiguous phrases in my speech, because I do not know when or whether the other person would take advantage of the logic. Is it safer for me to assume the logical definition at all times? Also, when other people use it, should I completely ignore the "and only if" part and forgive the other person of the misuse of the phrase? 140.254.136.178 (talk) 13:20, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If and only if, some times abbreviated iff, is the logical biconditional, both in math and in English. It is a phrase designed to reduce ambiguity. Your example sentence does make sense in terms of material implication. It is short hand for "promising to do your chores implies that you may have dessert, and, in addition, that is the only way that you may have desert, hence, if you have dessert, we can conclude that you also have promised to do your chores". It's a slightly weird example, because "may" is getting in to modal logic, and that can add another layer of complication in the logical interpretation of a sentence. Also note that things can be logically meaningful, even if semantically weird. For instance, the following statement is true - "If mint chocolate chip ice cream is my favorite flavor, then your name is Sally." (mcc is not my favorite, and, via the truth table for logical implication, A=>B evaluates to true when A and B are both false. Of course it is also true if your name happens to be Sally, but that doesn't say anything about my taste in ice cream).

Natural language is inherently vague, that's why we use controlled vocabulary in math and formal logic. That being said, many people do misuse the phrase "if and only if", and many people also don't really understand the logical meaning when others use it. If you are concerned about intelligibility, you can always write or say things the long way, as I have above. SemanticMantis (talk) 13:58, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, even "and"/"or" are confused in natural language, such as "I hate to go outside when it's raining and snowing", which really should say "or". StuRat (talk) 15:32, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Things may be clearer if you substitute the second sentence with its contrapositive

If you don't promise to do your chores, then you may not have dessert.

In logic, a statement is completely equivalent to its contrapositive. In language that's less the case, as we're more used to hearing certain phrasings. For example, "the red big ball" has the identical meaning to "the big red ball" but the former sound awkward because its not the standard adjective order. "Mathematically", though, they're equivalent (the set of attributes that the ball has is the same). -- 160.129.138.186 (talk) 15:13, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What if someone just did their chores (without promising), wouldn't they still be entitled to their dessert? Widneymanor (talk) 16:09, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Logically speaking, no, at least not necessarily. Again, a promise puts us in to deontic modality and muddles the issue, but the statements composing the original biconditional are about a "promise" (i.e. a commissive statement, a belief that an action will be taken, statement of intent) and a "may", i.e. a logical possibility. But even if we just treat the example in terms of sentence logic, it is not the case that "X does the chores" is equivalent to "X promises to do the chores". In real life, of course, doing the chores may be enough to entitle a child to dessert, but perhaps not if the parent is a logician :) SemanticMantis (talk) 17:40, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Widneymanor (talk) 18:33, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If it rains, the grass will get wet. (True.)
If and only if it rains will the grass get wet. (False, I might turn on the sprinkler.)

μηδείς (talk) 18:19, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Counterexample: "You may have dessert if you promise to do your homework" is incompatible with "if and only if you promise to do your chores", but can happily coexist with "if". Clarityfiend (talk) 22:45, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how that's a counterexample to anything, that's just half of the biconditional. If we take P=(the promise sentence) and M=(the may sentence) then you have written P->M. The original statement is of the form P<->M. So you're just stating one of the two implications. In your example, P->M, there is the possibility that M can be true while P is false. That is, there might be some way to get "may have dessert" without making the promise, i.e. P being true. With the biconditional statement, such a state of affairs is not possible: P and M must share a common truth value, and there is no way to Get M true without P being true. There are several illustrative examples of both natural language statements and the standard logical interpretations at if and only if. SemanticMantis (talk) 23:35, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Counter to "should I completely ignore the 'and only if' part". Clarityfiend (talk) 01:36, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, because you could have said "if you promise to do your chores or pay me $10" and it would not have been a counter example. Iff was a favorite of my undergrad philosophy dept. and intro for majors advisor. μηδείς (talk) 01:39, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

These discussions tend to be problematic because the mapping between natural-language conjunctions and mathematical-logical connectives is somewhat inexact. Logical connectives in the sense of classical mathematical logic (and, or, exclusive or, implies, if and only if, etc) are truth functional — that is, the truth value of the combined utterance depends only on the truth values of the constituent parts, and not in any way on the meaning of the constituent parts or the relationships between those meanings.

Natural languages (at least, English), on the other hand, probably does not contain any purely truth-functional connectives in most contexts. Usually, the meaning of the complex utterance is dependent on the relationship between the meanings of the parts, not just on their truth values. An exception would be in the natural-language formulations of precise mathematical statements; for these, the intended reading is the truth-functional one. But that has to be distinguished from informal mathematical discourse (even at the highest levels) that is not intended as a translation of a precise mathematical claim — in that context, mathematicians use English the same way as anyone else, except of course for vocabulary. There's a sort of code-switching that every advanced student picks up, knowing which rules to apply in what situations. --Trovatore (talk) 01:57, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]