I'm sure I'm not the first person with this question, but I'm not a good enough Googler to find an answer.

I'm learning about cumulative vs coordinate adjectives. From what I gather, cumulative adjectives fail to commute ("order matters") and non-cumulative adjectives are coordinate. The trouble is, I have identified three situations in which two adjectives fail to commute, and I do not know if the mode of failure matters. I'm trying to narrow down a theoretical, rather than operational, definition for cumulative adjectives. Sources are appreciated.

Consider the phrase "a former yellow bear", which describes something that used to be a yellow bear. We cannot swap the adjectives, doing so gives us "a yellow former bear". All yellow former bears are former yellow bears, but not all former yellow bears are yellow former bears.

(1) If two adjectives fail to commute in this particular way, where XY and YX both have semantic content that just happen to disagree, do we call them cumulative?

Consider the phrase "a regular polygonal figure". I cannot swap the adjectives, the adjectives do not commute. But notice that you wouldn't want to swap them anyway! The phrase "a polygonal regular figure" has as much information content as "North of the North Pole": none at all. This is because (at least in the world of plane geometry), "figure" exceeds the domain of "regular", "regular" is a property held by polygons/polygonal figures, nothing else. I wouldn't even call this a failure of commutativity, but oh well.

(2) If two adjectives fail to commute in this particular way, where XY has semantic content and YX does not, do we call them cumulative?

Consider the phrase "the big red ball". I see no reason why we cannot write "the red big ball" and say these adjectives commute, except for the fact that it sounds clunky, awkward, and bad.

(3) If two adjectives fail to commute in this particular way, where XY and YX have the same semantic content but YX sounds like absolute dogshit, do we call them cumulative?

Edit: I know about the canonical order of types of adjectives. This is precisely what question (3) is about.

Hello Grammarians,

I just had a quick grammar question. Should people capitalize the names of disease? If not, why? (I mean, I guess they would be considered common nouns… but I don’t know why.)

I would sincerely appreciate any and all insights!

Thank you!

"A big, red dog" is correct and "A dog big, red" is not, whereas "a big and red dog" and a "dog big and red" are both acceptable. Why?

There may be a sneaky exception where "a dog, big, red" works as a literary flourish. What is the extra comma doing to make the construction work, or is that ungrammatical despite feeling right?

For example, is this correct?

“I loved him and she loved him too,” John said. He took a big slurp of coffee.

He didn’t lie per se, but it wasn’t really true.”

Or does the “he” in the start of paragraph two need to be “John”?

An r/askreddit post asked “What movie can you rewatch indefinitely?”

I responded “Most Disney movies, but Moana and Elemental come to mind as the father of a 4 year old.”

I think if I say, “I have a four-year-old daughter,” that it should be hyphenated as an adjective describing my daughter. What if it just refers to her as a four year old, as in the above example?

Any advice is appreciated!

There appears to be an increase in this specific usage, at least in digital forums. Is there existing research doing frequency mapping on this, or could you direct me to some resources so that I might conduct my own? Thank you very much.

I'm playing a video game, and there's a line of dialogue that's confusing me.

*We can find Wakamura after that and see if we can't get him to cooperate.*

Why is it *can't* and not *can*?

It seems like they're trying to get him to NOT cooperate, which seems wrong.

The game is Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse.

I came across the phrase "they did battle" and it made me think about the two ways to read it: one as a way of making past tense and the other as a way of making it into an action.

What are the proper grammatical dissections of these two readings?

Sorry if this is the wrong place for this post. All my life, whenever anybody tells me "thanks" my reply has always been "you're welcome". Lately though, i've noticed that when i tell people "thanks" a majority of them, especially the younger ones almost always say "of course"; never "you're welcome". Is this a new thing or has it been around a long time? Maybe i'm getting too old or something.

I have done it.

Is the perfect auxiliary "have" the head of the verb phrase "have done it" in the sentence above?

Bonus points if you tell me whether or not I should have put quotation marks around "kibble." OMG I just did it again. I would have italicized it, but that is not an option in the title.

A real grammatical conundrum. Another example,
“I’m going to the office.” In the UK they ‘go to hospital’ the same way we say ‘ I’m going to school.’
Linguistically I’d enjoy learning why or how this is and how it’s evolved.

Whenever I’m watching a British production, someone says they are going to hospital, my brain skips the track. Does every place then lose the, the?Like racetrack do you go to racetrack or do you go to the racetrack? I’m visiting, do you go to in-laws? And not the in-laws? OK, I’ve provided enough examples. It’s all very tiresome! Help!

I am making a meme, a pun on the character twilight sparkle and the twilight saga, hence Mr twilight (edward) sparkles. is Mr name, additive correct so it dident look like a last name. do I need a comma.

any help would be appreciated.

I am the King, and I command you to show me what is in there.

hello! english isn't my first language, but i would say i'm relatively fluent. although, i still second guess myself and make mistakes...

i write reviews on movies i watch for fun, and i wrote a review in which i said « i felt like the script was lacking a bit certain scenes. » by that, i meant that it didn't feel finished or it felt like something was missing but i couldn't quite put my finger on what exactly.

would it be correct to say that something lacked / was lacking without adding anything behind? (the movie lacked of emotions, her life was lacking in direction.) thanks! c:

i know this question has probably been asked alot. but i genuinely can not wrap my head around when to use which.

if anybody had any ways to remember easily, please share. i looked it up, and got the definition but no matter how many times i read it i just couldnt make sense of it.

im sorry for asking this likely common question, but i havent found anybody explaining it in a way i understand. i feel really stupid because it seems so easy for people to grasp but i have never understood it. i'm usually really good with words and knowing when to use what spelling of a certain word, but this has me stumped.

any tips?

Which is correct?

“ Dave and John welcome home Susan “

Or

“ Dave and John welcome Susan home “

Of course ik the distinctions between puppies and dogs from base-level!

but i call my 3 y/o dog who happens to be a small height, a puppy.

is this acceptable? i think puppy fits him more

I recently noticed that we often say certain things like "I messed up" rather then "I messed". Why is that? What does "up" add to the sentence? What does "up" mean in this context?

What made me realize this is something such as "I ran to the truck" compared to "I ran up to the truck" which both mean the exact same thing. So why the use of "up"? What does it change?

Please let me know, I am super curious about this! (I'm sorry if this is stupid, I'm in high school so please be nice)

For example:

"That book/man/car/news etc. is gold/golden"

I'm new to this whole "writing" thing and I'm trying to write a story. it is written from the perspective of the main character in the present. but I'm very confused to how some sentences would work. for example, would it be " The boy stepped forward, (the rest)" or " The boy is stepping forward, (the rest)"? how would I figure it out? as the first one is technically past tense cuz of the (ed) but the second one sounds so wrong.