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“Private” isn’t describing the spacecraft per se, but the ownership of the spacecraft. “Privately-owned robotic spacecraft” is the “full” phrase, of which we elide part of the adjective.[0] Here, “privately-owned” is ORIGIN in that list, which puts it before TYPE.

[0] “Privately owned”, while on its own an adverb and verb, is functioning as a singular adjective in the larger phrase.

Edit: Previously said “funded”, not “owned”

The spacecraft is privately owned, as the company is private, but I don't know that I would say that it is privately funded. NASA paid tens of millions of dollars, not just for delivering a payload (paying for a product/service), but for development of the lunar hopper, Grace, which was an award/grant.

Upvoted, but just wanted to say it explicitly:

What an in-depth and thoughtful answer. Thank you for this!

Comments like these are literally why I come to HN honestly. It’s such a wonderful community here.

They are especially flavorful recently.

Having been raised in the states, I was a little shocked when I purchased a small book on English grammar. It explained a lot of tenses and proper arraignments of sentences I never knew. [which is clear from the things I just wrote. :)]

I found them learning another language (Spanish) gave me tools and categorizations for English that I didn't have and never applied before--at least not on a conscious level.

>So for example "yellow big balloon" sounds wrong but "big yellow balloon" sounds right.

I'm a native English speaker and wasn't even aware of this adjective ordering rule, until I read about it recently. I had internalised it, but wasn't consciously aware of it. I feel so sorry for anyone trying to learn English as a foreign language!

I am not a native English speaker (or English native speaker, ;)), but I've been using it forever...but didn't know there was an official adjective ordering.

I don't think most native English speakers know that, either. I only learned about it by hearing people explain it as an aspect of English to non-native speakers; it was not something anyone taught me in school, it's not something I've ever heard anyone mention in the context of proofreading or writing advice, and I couldn't actually tell you how it works - though I'm sure I must be using it instinctively.

It's strangely intuitive, unlike English spelling. People going around getting it right all the time without even knowing it.

Not unique to English, either: Wikipedia has examples in Tagalog where the order is almost the same (apart from a clause inserted in the middle of the second sequence).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagalog_grammar#Sequence_of_mo...

"I first tried to write a story when I was about seven. It was about a dragon. I remember nothing about it except a philological fact. My mother said nothing about the dragon, but pointed out that one could not say “A green great dragon,” but had to say “a great green dragon.” I wondered why, and still do." - J. R. R. Tolkien

Vocal language is not a solved problem and hopefully never will be. I think it is important that we all maintain our respective languages. Let them flow and change and never fetter them. Co-opt words, phrases and more as you like but cherish your roots.

Mr T invented an "Elvish" script and language and I think he also did so for Dwarves too. I'm pretty sure he was a prof at Oxbridge with a focus in languages, mostly English.

Most English native speakers never notice adjective order as being a thing.

It is a thing and I suspect Prof Tolkien learned that dimension comes first and colour second. I don't know why we insist on this but it is pretty deep!

The order of adjectives was never taught in K-12. It seems to be followed naturally by native English speakers without much thought until the order isn't followed. Then it sounds weird but most native speakers wouldn't be able to tell you why.

afaik Grammar is an attempt to systematize how native speakers speak, descriptive rather than prescriptive and so on. Tho maybe with writing there’s a feedback loop, and more instances where corrections are in order than colloquial speech.

That’s why learning foreign languages is useful. You can’t really understand grammar if your native language never requires you to think about it.

Indeed, learning German helped me notice some features of English that I haven't noticed before, it helps that both are West Germanic languages

It was not. It woke me up in English 1A in college. Almost all native English speakers it comes naturally because it sounds right, and you can hear it in non-native speakers. Fresh in college I went to another non-native county. I was not facile.

Native speaker. I don't think it's truly "official" and it's not typically formally taught. "Elements of Eloquence" by Mark Forsyth is frequently cited as an early source of the "rule". IMHO It seems to be more of an organic property of the language.

there's lots of articles on it. like this one https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/597981/adjective-order-g... and it's true that most of the time it just sounds odd or is confusing if you get the order "wrong".

Every grammatical property of every natural language is organic. Only the constructed languages have the opportunity to have inorganic grammar, but most of them borrow their grammar from some other natural language.

This is an over-simplification at best. Some features of English grammar and spelling were planned changes - yes, based on other languages, but with particular agenda in mind. Generally grammatical changes were to conform English to Latin grammar: the stricture that one should avoid a split infinitive was introduced for this reason. Spelling in mediæval times was often changed to reflect the semantics and Latin or Greek roots rather than pronunciation - a good example being the change from "det" to "debt", introducing a silent "b". Later, some spellings were changed for political reasons, e.g. replacing "tire" (the iron rim binding a wooden wheel together) with "tyre" to disguise the derivation from French.

In brief, then, English does have some similarities with con-langs.

I’m talking about grammar, not spelling. There are a few adopted grammatical rules (that many people ignore) but no artificial ones.

I think it's taught to non-native english speakers, but seldomly to native speakers who are largely unaware about what they treat as natural

I am a native English speaker. I didn't know either.

I think it is a weird phrase to say 'robotic private spacecraft' as well. It would be much better to say 'privately funded unmanned spacecraft' or 'robotic spacecraft launched by a private company'. Much less chance of confusion.

Right but this is because grammar is simply difficult (no matter the language), in fact, majority of native speakers struggle at writing simple essays or fail at basic literature courses..

It’s more emergent than official. It’s not something I think is ever taught in school and yet everyone intuits it with high accuracy.

Even crazier is that we intuitively mix this rule with another implicit rule, where “I” sounds go before “A” sounds go before “O” sounds in similar words, so “big, bad wolf” violates the normal adjective ordering rule but would sound weird any other way because of… reasons.

Language is insane.

You use the word intuit as a verb where I would go old school and use "understands it intuitively". You slap a letter s on the end to make the word sound correct to your ear. I will eventually use the word intuits in the same way you do but it will jar for a while. However it is concise and conveys the same meaning as "understand intuitively".

As you say, language is insane.

Now, adjective ordering. I think there is an "official" order but native speakers are not formally taught it because it is largely innate for us. It is likely something taught as a very advanced language feature because you can mix up the order and it still works.

I think a few experiments are in order:

Dark satanic mills. Jolly green giant. Large blue marble. Long winding road. Darling buds of May. Big fat Greek wedding. OK it looks like:

  * Emotive (jolly, happy, sad)
  * Quantitative (big, small, fat, tall, short)
  * Colour
  * Shape (winding)
  * Other adjectives - needs some work
  * Noun

This is going to need more work but there is a bit of a pattern. What I've picked up as emotive probably includes other classes of adjectives

> I would go old school and use "understands it intuitively"

I wonder if this is a regional difference. The OED claims that intuit as a verb has been in continuous use since the 1860s (at least) and I've heard it used as a verb my entire life (various areas in the US).

"The OED claims that intuit as a verb has been in continuous use since the 1860s"

That's a fair source but I went to a pretty posh school in Oxfordshire! Oxford was about 90p return away by bus from Abingdon in the mid to late 1980s. I studied English to O (Ordinary) level (both language and literature) and bagged a pair of Bs.

I might also point out that I also attended schools in Devon, Manchester and multiple places in West Germany (UK Army brat).

Obviously, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and I have only my own recollections to go by but I have never knowingly heard intuit as a verb. I have only ever seen it written by Americans (for a given value of America)!

I do like it and will fall in line forthwith!

not a native English speaker (or English native speaker

As a non-native speaker who was never taught it, for some reason I pick the difference naturally. English native speaker sounds like as e.g. opposed to American or maybe Irish to me, and it actually adds vagueness to what language we’re talking about. Cause there are English native speakers of French.

While native English speaker sounds like exactly native speakers of English regardless of origin.

I think it’s a feature of languages in general, and there’s not as much of an official ordering, but rather an ordering that performs default binding of meanings. In hard cases you fallback to prepositions, in light cases you just employ order.

English adjective order is further complicated by the vowel order. For example "tick tock" sounds correct, while "tock tick" sounds wrong. English is a beautiful mess.

Furthermore, (and not really applicable in this case), you can bring an adjective to the front out of order for emphasis - so yellow big car would mean there were plenty of big cars, but the yellow one in particular. In spoken English there would be heavy vocal emphasis on yellow, and in written yellow would likely be italicized, just to make double sure.

Indeed, this doubled potential meaning of private means that “private robotic spacecraft” is one that is privately-owned, but “robotic private spacecraft” means that there’s something private about the spacecraft, like it’s naked or on antidepressants or maybe it just doesn’t like talking to the press.

In other languages (e.g. German) you can "fine-tune" the order and hierarchy of the attributes with a comma.

private, robotic spacecraft (with comma) -> private and robotic are attributes to spacecraft, the order could be changed but as in english you have an order that is more likely used

private robotic spacecraft (without comma) -> the attribute private refers to a robotic spacecraft

If you would like to emphasize that this is a private (and not public) robotic spacecraft you would use the version without comma.

That's fascinating and makes me ponder my interactions (in English) with Germans.

I believe even though this trait does not feel proper in written English, it's somewhat common in spoken English, if you interpret the comma as a stulting of rhythym and tone.

It’s the same in English. There was supposed to be a comma between both words because they’re coordinate adjectives.

A rational reference, but there are no hard and fast rules.

Perhaps more importantly, in well written English superfluous words are removed - thus 'private robotic spacecraft' becomes 'private spacecraft', since all spacecraft are by definition at least partly autonomous.

In the domain of moon spacecraft particularly, doesn’t there remain a clear distinction to be drawn between manned and unmanned spacecraft, given the power of the “man on the moon” trope in English-speakers’ imagination?

“Private spacecraft tips over on moon” would mean something rather different if a modern-day Neil Armstrong were inside at the time.

If anything, the fact that it’s just a machine matters more to me than who paid for it.

Manned or unmanned could indeed be more relevant adjectives than 'robotic'. Except that, as is well known to all here, the era of manned lunar exploration is well and truly over.