The convention in English is to put the adjective before the noun 99.99% of the time. But for some reason, there are cases where it is used. For example: commit a crime as a serviceman/woman, and you’ll face a Court Martial; commit a crime as a civilian, and you may hear from the Attorney General.
And of course, Orlando is The City Beautiful, and Hamms is The Beer Refreshing.
Other than sounding slightly florid (or poetic, depending on your point of view), is there any specific reason you would put an adjective after a noun? Martial (military) Court, though it hits the ear wrong, makes no less sense than Court Martial. Similarly, General Attorney makes no less sense than Attorney General.
Answered your own question right there. Every social whatever has conventions.
I’m sure linguistics people and speakers of other languages will check in…
In American Sign Language, for example, classically it is “ball red.” Makes perfect sense: what are you talking about, what about it. If you really want to talk about the redness of …, you can switch it, and the languages I know allow it for that reason–as does English, quite a bit more than 0.01% of the time (I’ll match your hyperbole and raise it one litote).
Interestingly, within the last generation or two the convention in ASL is changing to match the English one, and adjective-noun is used all over.
German grammar, in its use of verbs and adverbs, is famous (in the West, at least) for being quite “strict” in making people stay at the edge of their seat waiting to find out where the subject is going–like conventional English with adjectives, if you want to look at it that way. But like in all languages (I know of) that can be jimmied when necessary.
Right - many of the legal terms of the English common law were heavily influenced by “law French”, which was used in the English well after English was the language used elsewhere in government. Those influences remain.
I believe it’s a holdover from the French; because of the Norman Conquest of 1066, English developed with a Germanic base (Anglo-Saxon) for commoners and a Latinate superstructure (French) for the aristocracy. This dichotomy continues to the present day; e.g., it’s why you sweat while a rich person perspires.
In English, French terms naturally abound in such specialized fields as the legal profession and the military, which is where your examples come from. Saying things like the brothers Grimm makes you sound a bit more sophisticated than if you said the Grimm brothers. And so on, and so on.
Additional note: With terms like court martial, the correct plural is courts martial and not court martials. In other words, the ending goes on the noun and not the adjective, just as it should.
How about the construction in “the maiden all forlorn”? I don’t think that one comes from French (isn’t “maiden” Germanic?), but then, it seems to be somehow different from “attorney general” or “cordon bleu”, anyway.
Yes, maiden comes from Mädchen, but the etymology of the word is unimportant. The French syntax can be used with words of any origin, especially to create poetry.
To be sure, we can in poetry at once point out that, in grammar and word order regarding, off all bets are. The OP’s examples “Orlando is The City Beautiful, and Hamms is The Beer Refreshing” I think as poetic can be explained. This is the judge all shaven and shorn
That married the man all tattered and torn
That kissed the maiden all forlorn
Examples galore abound.
ETA: Actually, I think the examples from House That Jack Built can better be interpreted as phrases appositive, even if missing the commas required are. Hey, poetry it is.
Y’know, on thought second, I think not that those are phrases appositive after all. Post-adjectives with pre-adverbs I think now they are as suggested Chronos in place the first.
Huh, funny, I was subbing for a language arts class the other day where they were learning about appositive phrases, and I was frantically scouring my memory for anything I remembered about them (“Your search for ‘appositive phrase’ returned zero hits. Did you mean to search for ‘quantum field theory’?”), and here they show up a day later.
Did you remember to pick up the Sevens-Up? We will need crates aplenty to stock our house beautiful. In times past, in fact, since time immemorial, that was enough for many dreams deferred. While you’re at it, could you also get some nachos supreme? The ministers plenipotentiary and the femmes fatale are coming and threatening to call up some courts-martial unless we deliver proof positive of catering extraordinaire. If we fail, they will consider it malice aforethought and convince the body politic to declare us personas non grata with letters patent delivered by a private first class. Even God Almighty would be afraid of such a force majeure.
Nitpick: The correct plural is personae non gratae (Latin, not French; the adjective takes an ending). And 7-Up is a proper name (one 7-Up, two 7-Ups).
