There is – as usual – an interesting discussion over at Transblawg. This time it’s about creaky-sounding (legal) phrases in which the noun precedes the adjective, some of which may be inverted: court martial/martial court, secretary general/general secretary, law merchant/merchant law etc. I assume the post-positives to be Norman-isms, since it was the Normans who did most of the owning after 1066, but I wonder if they actually brought over both forms: my secret drinking expeditions trips besuited to the Channel Islands taught me that you can put adjectives in front of nouns in Norman French dialects like Jèrriais.
Similar posts
Back soon
Comments