Nerd question: My English brain reads “happy little accident” and “big angry intent” as the correct ordering of adjectives for both phrases. But semantically, the adjectives are actually swapped in order (big and little are not in the same position). What is going on?
I think its to do with the subject of the sentence.
The subject of sentence 1 is happy accidents, and he is describing it as a ‘happy’ accident because its turned out in a pleasant way, as opposed to something like “frustrating little accident”.
Sentence 2 the subject is angry intent, like he is behaving in a way that is focused by angry emotion, and in this case ‘big’ is the modifier that is giving you a scale of how intense the emotion is.
Note: I am in no way an english or language authority, just how i think my brain is handling the structure of those sentences and the order that feels ‘right’.
Nerd question: My English brain reads “happy little accident” and “big angry intent” as the correct ordering of adjectives for both phrases. But semantically, the adjectives are actually swapped in order (big and little are not in the same position). What is going on?
I think its to do with the subject of the sentence.
The subject of sentence 1 is happy accidents, and he is describing it as a ‘happy’ accident because its turned out in a pleasant way, as opposed to something like “frustrating little accident”.
Sentence 2 the subject is angry intent, like he is behaving in a way that is focused by angry emotion, and in this case ‘big’ is the modifier that is giving you a scale of how intense the emotion is.
Note: I am in no way an english or language authority, just how i think my brain is handling the structure of those sentences and the order that feels ‘right’.
Funny, I thought the same thing!