anyhow, I decided to do a mini-survey to see for myself ... so I got a short story and simply picked out the first 20 adjectives ..
Hey-ho. Here they are in all their triangular glory ... in order of appearance ...
früh
scharf groß
groß schön flach
entfernt östlich wenig dritte
vierte letzte übermütig dicht
merkwürdig früh vierte kühl groß
If you're picking "winners", then " groß" wins. Just.
Now, I said it was a short story ..and it was. But what sort of story do you think it was ? A love story ? An expedition into darkest Sweden ? Science Fiction ? Comedy ? "Farce ?
It's as if somebody had invented a "Grammarblaster" ... on the dial, you could get it to do all sorts of different things to a text ... add lots of adjectives and adverbs to make it more/less exciting, change all the nouns to their opposites, exaggerate all the verbs, or, as I've done here, blast away everything except the adjectives, leaving them all on their own. Whatever.
What an amazing contraption !
But .... could you get some idea of the nature of that story just from the first 20 adjectives?
Have a think. What's your evidence ? The cunning thing is, it means you have to know or find out what they mean to do it. Subtle or what ?
Now that would be an interesting homework ...and fun to mark, and it's a great mixture of facts and creative thinking. And there's no "right" answer. Not really.
OK pop-pickers ... 'tis music time ... another in my occasional "words video" thread ... Darf ich das behalten " .... and what lovely words they are.
german-ghosts.html