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Why tock-tick does not sound right to your ears ver wondered why we say gin-material-purpose noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you'll sound tick-tock, not tock-tick, or ding-dong, not dong. ding; King Kong, not Kong King? Turns out it is one of the unwritten rules of English that na- tive speakers know without knowing like a maniac" That explains why we say little green men" not The rule, explains a BBC article, is: "If there are three words then the order has to go I, A, O. If there are two words then the first is I and the sec- ond is either A or O. Mish mash, chit-chat, dilly-dally, shilly-shally tip top, hip-hop, flip-flop, tic tac, sing song, ding dong, King Kong, ping pong." "green little men," but Big Bad Wolf" sounds like a gross violation of the "opinion (bad)-size (big)- noun (wolf)'"order.It won't though, if you recall the first rule about the L-A-O order That rule seems inviolable: "All four of a horse's feet make exactly the same sound. But we always, always say clip-clop, nev There's another unwrittern rule at work in the name Little Red Riding Hood, says the article. er clop-clip." This rule even has a techni cal name, if you care to know Adjectives in English abso lutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-ori- it-the rule of ablaut reduplica- then life is simpler knowing that we know the rule without knowing it. PLAY IT BY EAR: If a word sequence sounds wrong, it is probably wrong For more: BBC

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Ablaut Reduplication explains why "tock-tick" doesn't sound right


Uploaded by Bilbo Swaggins Apr 08, 2018 at 09:16PM EDT

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Ablaut Reduplication explains why "tock-tick" doesn't sound right

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Uploaded Apr 08, 2018 at 09:16PM EDT

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