These are idiomatic expressions, and commentators have sometimes objected to the second in each pair. Logically, they argue, the first two includes number one and number two, but the two first implies that there are two number ones. This logic chopping does not hold up when applied to natural language. All four expressions are still Standard, even if the two (three) first and the two (three) last sound a bit old-fashioned.
Category: Language
Language is based in threes. Sender, message, receiver. Subject verb object. A language involves a semantic system, a phonological system, and a syntactic system. Phonetics study the sounds of languages from three basic points of view.
accent
in speech, emphasis given a particular sound, called prosodic systems in linguistics. There are three basic accentual methods: stress, tone, and length. Continue reading accent
trigraph
SYLLABICATION: tri
