25.1.2 Other Structural Divergences

Many structural divergences between languages are based on typological differences. Others, however, are simply idiosyncratic differences that are characteristic of particular languages or language pairs. For example in English the unmarked order in a noun-phrase has adjectives precede nouns, but in French and Spanish adjectives generally follow nouns. $ ^{1} $

Spanish bruja verde French maison bleue

witch green house blue

English "green witch" "blue house"

Chinese relative clauses are structured very differently than English relative clauses, making translation of long Chinese sentences very complex.

Language-specific constructions abound. English, for example, has an idiosyncratic syntactic construction involving the word there that is often used to introduce a new scene in a story, as in there burst into the room three men with guns. To give an idea of how trivial, yet crucial, these differences can be, think of dates. Dates not only appear in various formats — typically DD/MM/YY in British English, MM/DD/YY in American English, and YYMMDD in Japanese—but the calendars themselves may also differ. Dates in Japanese, for example, are often relative to the start of the current Emperor's reign rather than to the start of the Christian Era.