Re:Avoiding the Adjective Fallacy
by SideburnsOfDoom on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @12:21PM
(#10297398)
> Therefore the rule which says it must be "little old lady" is plain wrong.
This is natural language. One contrived corner-case counter-example doesn't invalidate the general rule.
Right; rather it invalidates the purported generality of the rule (which no serious linguist would assert in the first place).
In this case, "old" applies to "little lady", not "lady" alone.
That merely follows from the order.
In "little old lady", "little" applies to "old lady", not "lady" alone.
Either way, the meaning is the same, because semantically, the actual attributes which "old" and "little" denote apply independently to the person indicated by "lady".
"Which little lady are you referring to? The old little lady, or the young "little lady" that is her five-year-old great granddaughter?"
Though order is a syntactic feature, the restrictions on adjective order are derived from semantics, which depend on context. They are not ruled out by the grammar, per se.
Therefore the rule which says it must be "little old lady" is plain wrong.
The fallacy consists of regarding incorrect or incomplete rules as the unvarnished truth which to learn from and imitate.