Post by account_disabled on Jan 3, 2024 6:42:45 GMT
Francesca talked about it a few weeks ago in the Carta trace blog, " Adjectives are useful, you just have to use them well ", addressing the topic of adjectives in depth. It was a sort of defense to this element of the language that many tend to devalue in creative writing. Perhaps it is also true that an abuse of adjectives denotes poor writing experience among novice authors - a step that we all, let us never forget, have had to step on. But it is equally true that, if they exist, adjectives should be used and not demonized a priori. Each element of the language has its own function: it is out of place when we assign it a value and a task that go beyond this function. The concept of "attribute" in the analysis of the period I still remember the logical analysis today .
It was one of the subjects taught in high school. I liked it, because they find it simple to understand and… logical , in fact. In the end, analyzing the period almost became a mathematics lesson: each element had to be in its place and had a precise role. Let's take the sentence “I eat a green apple”. Logical analysis tells me that: “I” is the subject “I eat” is the verbal Special Data predicate “an apple” is the direct object “green” is the attribute of the direct object Now we can also discuss whether the sentence has meaning even without that attribute and it is certainly true. But within some context that attribute can make sense. If we describe a character, we can get by by writing "He wore a suit and tie", or we can give more "colour" to our description by writing "He wore an elegant dark blue suit on which a canary yellow tie stood out" - I don't know about elegance, so if it's a punch in the eye, be patient.
But the attribute is important, because it must be used to attribute a value to a noun . Adjectives, therefore, must enhance the word to which they are linked, not weigh it down. If I write, for example, "I ran a hand through my wavy hair", I have abused the adjective, in my opinion. The reader may wonder why my hair was wavy at that moment or when I announced that I had wavy hair. Self-description, when we tell in the first person, must certainly be done, but with skill. Scarlett Thomas does it very well. The only downside to bunks is what they do to my hair. I don't know if it's the air conditioning, or the static electricity, or the velveteen that the compartments are lined with, but the fact is that my hair goes crazy and becomes similar to fluff trapped on flypaper. Maybe it's a little frivolous to think about certain things. Maybe it's the frizzy hair that makes me frivolous.
It was one of the subjects taught in high school. I liked it, because they find it simple to understand and… logical , in fact. In the end, analyzing the period almost became a mathematics lesson: each element had to be in its place and had a precise role. Let's take the sentence “I eat a green apple”. Logical analysis tells me that: “I” is the subject “I eat” is the verbal Special Data predicate “an apple” is the direct object “green” is the attribute of the direct object Now we can also discuss whether the sentence has meaning even without that attribute and it is certainly true. But within some context that attribute can make sense. If we describe a character, we can get by by writing "He wore a suit and tie", or we can give more "colour" to our description by writing "He wore an elegant dark blue suit on which a canary yellow tie stood out" - I don't know about elegance, so if it's a punch in the eye, be patient.
But the attribute is important, because it must be used to attribute a value to a noun . Adjectives, therefore, must enhance the word to which they are linked, not weigh it down. If I write, for example, "I ran a hand through my wavy hair", I have abused the adjective, in my opinion. The reader may wonder why my hair was wavy at that moment or when I announced that I had wavy hair. Self-description, when we tell in the first person, must certainly be done, but with skill. Scarlett Thomas does it very well. The only downside to bunks is what they do to my hair. I don't know if it's the air conditioning, or the static electricity, or the velveteen that the compartments are lined with, but the fact is that my hair goes crazy and becomes similar to fluff trapped on flypaper. Maybe it's a little frivolous to think about certain things. Maybe it's the frizzy hair that makes me frivolous.