Adjectives in English Grammar vs Classification

--- 1997-11-04 ---

With the management of media on computers, it often makes sense to name things from their most macro/general qualities to their more detailed/specific qualities. This results in the creation of hierarchical directory structures of files. Sometimes even, when many similar files are stored at the same level in one directory, they may be named with a common macro quality at the head of the name, and then some more detailed and distinguishing qualities deeper into the name.

Often, there may be several levels of detail in file naming, with subsequent levels of qualifiers delimited by a hyphen, underscore, or similar character, resembling in some ways a hierarchical directory structure. This helps the most similar files clump together in alphabetical sorts of the directory's contents. Once named like this, files can then be broken apart later into directory structures when it becomes clear that there is an established pattern of classification which warrants being "institutionalised" in a directory hierarchy.

So, why then do we, as English speakers, use adjectives in front of nouns in language? Why is it "the quick brown fox" instead of "the fox quick brown"? Apparently, there must be a reason why we need to do this. Here's one hypothesis for you...

It may be that we all develop our own internal archetypes for nouns, and then by the mere mention of a noun will immediately form a mental image. Once this mental image has been formed, complete with all its built-in defaut qualities, perhaps it is then harder to override or extend the mental image with additional qualifiers - almost as though the language center is impatient to send what it has to the experiential centers of the brain. Nouns act as triggers to send a package of information to the experiential centers. So, in order for any additional object qualifiers to be most effective, they need to be "preloaded" so that they are ready to be shipped once the triggering noun is received.

Or maybe this is just a theory stupid.