Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
Without knowing any of these rules, native speakers would know that "The French old big ugly woman is late" is not correct.
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Strange. I think it also has to do with feeling. I was looking at your list, and didn't really understand it. (Maybe it being 3 AM here has something to do with that.) It hit me when I saw your sentence, and I immediately thought: That's wrong. This sentence doesn't sound right. It has to be "The ugly big old French woman is late".
Then I also understood the list. A word from the "1" row always comes before a word from the "2" row, and so on, and my assumption turned out to be correct. I never learned that. I even didn't learn it when I was studying English for two years, full time (almost 15 years ago); but it could have been in year 3 or 4.
Still, I immediately "felt" what the correct word order should be. Maybe it's because I read a lot of English (about 95%), and I just know because of reading correct word orders way more often than wrong ones.
On the other hand, I have the same "feeling" when reading or writing Dutch. Often I read something, and I think: "That's wrong, but I don't know why. It has to be like <reconstruct stuff here>." Then I'm going to look it up, and most of the time, it turns out I'm right. Still, I'm 100% percent sure I never learned it; or I did learn it and it became some sort of instinct or something.
Even so, I'm sure I make quite a lot of mistakes. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few within this post.