Craig,
Cartography is a research program within the Principles and Parameters framework of syntactic theory. It emerged and gained its name in a series of colloquia held in Italy in the late 90s and became widely known through the publication of the first three volumes of the OUP series The Cartography of Syntactic Structures (Cinque 2002; Belletti 2004b; Rizzi 2004b).
This is from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2010.00202.x/full
A summary article by Ur Shlonsky
You will see from their examples that the maximal type of phrase that I was after will not fall out naturally, but examples of each rank are given. I first came across this kind of claim in R.A. Close's Reference Grammar for Students of English (Longman, 1975)ยง 7.16 on p. 158 and table 14 on p. 159
Bruce
--- [log in to unmask] wrote:
From: "Spruiell, William C" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Cartography (was RE: grammar question--adjective series and commas)
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:26:43 -0500
"Cartography" has been used by at least two "schools" of linguistics in the past twenty years; the Italian work looks to be separate from the SFL uses of the term (e.g. Matthiessen's (1995) _Lexicogrammatical Cartography_).
I suspect that the combination of linguistics' longstanding use of mapping metaphors, in connection with the growth/ease of visualization devices in recent media and maybe some spillover from the use of "-graphy" in litcrit, render "cartography" a rather natural, uh, landmark (*somebody* had to make that pun, so I figured I'd get it out of the way fast).
--- Bill Spruiell
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Craig Hancock
Sent: Sun 2/27/2011 2:44 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: grammar question--adjective series and commas
Bruce,
In reworking your examples in my mind, I find it easy to find versions
that seem just as natural as the version you present as the most
natural. Everything might depend on what you were looking for in a rug.
For the color scheme and size of a room, it might be most important
that it be large and green. For an employee, you might want someone
smart and reliable and not care so much about age or size. You mention
that the work is being done in Italy. Do they propose it for Italian?
For all languages? What would the basis of that be? What would they say
about a language like Spanish, where the adjectives come after the
noun?
The usual explanation for English is that we have pre-deteminers,
determiners, post-deteminers, true adjectives, noun modifiers, the head
noun, and then postnominal groups (like prepositional phrases.)
Dick gives a good example of an adjective noun combination (sweet
tooth) that constitutes a set phrase, but for the most part, those are
noun noun combinations, like ice cream or death wish or rest stop.
Traditional grammar often lists "movable or coordinate" adjectives as
requiring commas, the test being whether you can change the order
without significantly altering meaning and whether it feels OK to put
an "and" between them. Generally, this is true of the true adjectives
(the truly scalar terms). Of course, they want to call everything that
modifies a noun an adjective, which makes it necessary to come up with
a sub-category.
You leave me wondering how they tested for this scale and whether it
might be language or culture specific and whether it would hold true no
matter what it was you were describing.
Craig
Scott, Some recent work in this area (in Italy) calls the natural order
> of adjectives in the noun phrase its cartography. The grammarian tries
> different orders to determine the natural order of classification. Hence
> you might try to make a maximal stretch of adjectives like: She sold her
> a certain expensive charming large square ancient green hand woven
> Armenian carpet at auction. In this noun phrase there is a ranking of
> the eight features: origin, style, color, age, shape, size, appeal, and
> value. The the possible adjective orders map to a scalar value of rank.
> Such adjectives as classify measures, e.gg., capacity, weight, volume,
> length, width, etc., might all share the same rank as size. Examples of
> some even farther from these eight are: sixteenth, equal, similar, chief,
> which come first (opposite order as given). The investigator tries
> different orders for pairs of adjectives and determines what the most
> natural ranking is a step at a time. When two adjectives fall in the same
> rank, they characterize it as belonging to that particular class. If the
> order is not natural, or the adjectives fall into the same rank, then a
> comma is required; sort of like a pause to adjust the thinking relative to
> their classification. In my paraphrastic grammar I call this adjective
> accumulation. The structure of the noun phrase is recursively
> left-branching. There is a similar phenomenon with the natural ordering
> of adverbials, but in a right-branching structure. Just for fun I made up
> a very long sentence with both kinds of accumulation (not advisable, but
> kinda fun): "The unique $46,000 92 degree hot uncomfortable large 5-foot
> by 5-foot by 15-foot two ton almost 12 year old broken-down square open
> deep dark green American steel Hummer was driven flawlessly by a
> professional at 6 miles an hour and 3 thousand revolutions per minute for
> a dozen miles on Route 66 from Albuquerque to the junction twice for four
> hours on Monday from 8:00 a. m. till noon." Bruce
>
> --- [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> From: Dick Veit
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: grammar question--adjective series and commas
> Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2011 23:05:07 -0500
>
> Scott,
>
> Consider the difference between these two:
> my troublesome, sweet sister my troublesome sweet toothIn 1, both
> "troublesome" and "sweet" modify "sister." My sister is troublesome but
> sweet.
> In 2, "sweet" modifies "tooth," and "troublesome" modifies "sweet tooth."
> My sweet tooth is troublesome.
>
> When two or more adjectives (as in 1) modify a noun in parallel, they are
> separated by commas. When one adjective modifies a phrase that contains an
> adjective (as in 2), no comma is used.
>
> Other examples:
> a tall, dark, handsome stranger [tall & dark &
> handsome] stranger
> the best inexpensive Italian restaurant the [best [inexpensive
> [Italian restaurant]]]
> Dick
>
> On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Scott Woods wrote:
> Dear List, The following phrases seem different to me: my
> beautiful gray Persian cat my large black leather coat my large
> gray Persian cat my beautiful black leather coat my old sad mangy
> cat my sweet old Irish grandmother my beautiful Irish linen
> tablecloth Some of these need commas between some of the adjectives,
> but others seem not to. Do you agree? How can this be explained?
> Thanks, Scott Woods
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