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Suppose the following

The horse is big, white and heavy.

Does the meaning of the noun change when the order of the atributes of an object change (in this case a horse)? Are there any exceptions? And if posible and more generally, does this hold for every language?

Edwin Ashworth
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Garmekain
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    Many answers (and comments) on that earlier question address possible differences in meaning relating to "non-standard" sequences. For example, "Scottish Smoked Salmon" and "Smoked Scottish Salmon". I can't think of any possible differences in meaning with your specific example, but that's mainly because I find it hard to imagine any context where those adjectives would be chained together to describe a horse, regardless of the sequence. – FumbleFingers Sep 28 '17 at 16:11
  • Its just an example, but the idea i think is clear. – Garmekain Sep 28 '17 at 16:19
  • I don't think the idea is at all clear. For what it's worth, The red horse is big and heavy sounds more or less "natural" to me, but The heavy horse is big and red just sounds weird - this despite the fact that a heavy horse (=draft horse, shire horse) is a well-known collocation. – FumbleFingers Sep 28 '17 at 16:25
  • In the last example the object is "heavy horse" so the meaning is different because the nouns are. – Garmekain Sep 28 '17 at 16:32
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    No. The horse is heavy would not normally be understood as meaning It's a heavy horse. The former means the horse weighs a lot, the latter means it's a specific "breed" of horse. But I don't think this gives any relevant insight into other possible adjective sequences. – FumbleFingers Sep 28 '17 at 16:38
  • "Does the meaning of the noun change if the order of attributes change?" You mean is horse different if it's described as "big, white and heavy", "heavy, white and big", "white, big and heavy"? Surely it's still just a horse? What are you asking here? – Andrew Leach Sep 28 '17 at 23:20
  • This question is not a duplicate of 'What is the rule for adjective order?'. Adjectives modifying a noun have an order. Order of adjectives in a complement depend entirely on the emphasis you want to give them. – Mitch Oct 02 '17 at 01:11

1 Answers1

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I'm not about to look them up for you and there have been several threads in ELL dealing with the order of attributes.

Most of us never think about the order but it often matters very much.

Some different things:

The meaning of the noun never changes: a horse remains a horse.

The horse is big, white and heavy does border on being a relevant example and for order of attribution to really take effect, that would need to be The big, white, heavy horse.

Is it obvious, that's not the same as either The white, big, heavy horse or The heavy, white, big horse, please?

Robbie Goodwin
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