Veladžić Amina

THE ORDER OF ADJECTIVES IN THE ENGLISH NOUN-PHRASE

Final paper

Bihać, July 2019

 UNIVERSITY OF BIHAĆ

PEDAGOGICAL FACULTY

ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

THE ORDER OF ADJECTIVES IN THE ENGLISH NOUN-PHRASE

Final paper

VELADŽIĆ AMINA

PROF.DR. EDIN DUPANOVIĆ

Bihać, July 2019

CONTETNTS

1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 1

2. THE ENGLISH NOUN-PHRASE ............................................................................................. 2

3. THE ORDER OF ADJECTIVES ............................................................................................... 6

4. CORPUS FINDINGS ................................................................................................................. 13

5. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 22

REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................... 24
 1. INTRODUCTION

This final paper deals with the order of adjectives in the English noun phrase. Several
variations are possible but Thompson and Martinet (2011:35) states that a fairly usual order
is: Adjectives of

a) Size
b) General description
c) Age
d) Shape
e) Colour
f) Material
g) Origin
h) Purpose

This paper deals with the some of the variations of the order of adjectives in the English noun
phrase, which can be found in various grammars. The reason for choosing this particular
theme is due to personal interest, and therefore intrinsic motivation towards the field of
English syntax.

This paper is divided into five distinctive parts:

- Introduction
- The English Noun Phrase
- The Order of Adjectives
- Corpus findings
- Conclusion

The paper begins with a short introduction, which is followed by an explanation of the
English noun phrase. It explains noun, noun phrase and noun phrase constituents, as well as
the syntactic roles of noun phrases. The third part of the paper is concerned with the order of
adjectives and explains the order of adjectives in premodification and before nouns in detail.
It also talks about the position of adjectives mentioned in different grammars. The following
part of the paper deals with corpus findings. The final part of the paper is a conclusion which
summarizes the most important parts of the paper and final thoughts on the theme and serves
as a check on whether the goal of the paper was reached and accomplished.

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 1. THE ENGLISH NOUN-PHRASE

Noun and noun phrase

Huddleston and Pullum (2005:83) define the noun category as a category which includes
words denoting all kinds of physical objects (people, animals, places and things) and
substances: apple, dog, fire, London, sister, water, etc. However, we can’t use this as the
criterion for identifying English nouns, though, because there are also a large number of
nouns denoting abstract entities: absence, debt, fear, love, silence, etc. But it can be used as a
basis for a general definition applying across languages.

NOUN: a grammatically distinct category of words which includes those denoting all kinds of
physical objects, such as persons, animals and inanimate objects. (Huddleston and Pullum,
2005:83)

Leech and Svartvik (1994:315) explain that a noun phrase is called a noun phrase because the
word which is its head (i.e. the main part) is typically a noun, whilst Swan (1995:xxv) defines
the noun phrase as a group of words (e.g. article + adjective + noun) which acts as a subject,
object or complementation of a clause, e.g. the last bus.

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Noun phrase constituents

In describing noun phrases, Quirk et al (1985:1238-1239) distinguishes the following

constituent parts:

1. The HEAD, around which the other constituents cluster and which dictates concord
with other parts of the sentence

2. The DETERMINTATIVE, which includes

a) Pre-determiners, i.e. all items which can precede any central determiner in a noun
phrase, e.g. all, both – all the furniture, both the musicians
b) Central determiners e.g. those – all those fine musicians
c) Post-determiners, which follow central determiners but precede premodifiers, e.g.
adjectives. Post-determiners include e.g. numerals – many, few – the many new
offices, the few survivors

3. The PREMODIFICATION, which comprises all the items placed before the head
other than determinatives, notably adjectives, (or, rather, adjective phrases) and nouns:
Some furniture
Some expensive furniture
Some very expensive furniture
Some very expensive office furniture
Some very, very expensive office furniture

4. The POSTMODIFICATION, comprising all the items placed after the head, notably:
Prepositional phrases: the car outside the station
Non-finite clauses: the car standing outside the station
Relative clauses: the car that stood outside the station
Complementation: a bigger car than that

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The Syntactic Roles of Noun Phrases

Noun phrases may have a wide range of syntactic roles. Biber et al (1999:98) lists the
following roles:

1. Subject
Two women had come in and she asked them to wait, giving them two
magazines to look at.

2. Direct object
The pilot saw a field ahead.

3. Indirect object
At primary school, he had been allowed to make her a birthday card.

4. Prepositional object
I don’t know whether my brain can cope with all this.

5. Complement of preposition
He worked in a shop – probably at that time.

6. Subject predicative
Well, their son Charlie was a great mate of our Rob’s.

7. Object predicative
No, but I know they’ll probably christen her Victoria.

8. Adverbial
Mr. Thesiger, who will be eighty next summer, arrived in London last week.

9. Pre-modifier of noun
He was also chairman of Labour’s home policy committee

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10. Apposition
He and the club’s solicitor and director, Maurice Watkins, sat either side of
Edwards while on the flanks were placed to more lawyers, one representing
Knighton’s take-over firm, MK Traflord Holdings, and the other, United’s
merchant bank, Ansbacher.

11. Pre-modifier of adjective or adverb phrase

The story broke all right, but two weeks earlier than planned.

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 2. THE ORDER OF ADJECTIVES

The Ordering of Adjectives in Premodification

Quirk et al (1985:437) explains that in order to describe the relative order of premodifiers, it
will be helpful to divide the territory between DET (the determinative) and the HEAD (head)
into four premodicifcation zones (I, II, III, IV), for example

DET I II III IV HEAD

This first important long French novel

(I) Zone I: PRECENTRAL

In the precentral zone we find peripheral non-gradable adjectives, in particular intensifying

adjectives:

(i) Emphasizers, e.g. certain, definite, plain, pure

(ii) Amplifiers, e.g. absolute, entire, extreme, perfect, total
(iii) Downtoners, e.g. feeble, slight

(II) Zone II: CENTRAL

The central zone includes the central, gradable adjectives, e.g. big, funny, intelligent, keen,
and powerful. Central adjectives admit:

- Intensifiers e.g. a very cold day

- Comparison: e.g. its colder than yesterday
- Alternative predicative position e.g. Last summer was very cold

(III) Zone III: POSTCENTRAL

This zone includes participles and colour adjectives, e.g. a retired colonel, a deserted village,
a working theory, blue skies

(IV) Zone IV: PREHEAD

This zone includes:

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 (i) Adjectives with a proper noun basis denoting nationality, provenance, and style:
e.g. American, Gothic
(ii) Other denominal adjectives with a relation to nouns, often with the meaning
“consisting of”, “involving”, or “relating to” e.g. annual, economic, medical,
social, political, rural
(iii) Nouns: tourist (attraction), Yorkshire (women), college (student)

Quirk et al (1985) also mentions that when items from the same group occur, that there is a
tendency for those modifiers which denote place and time to take precedence. E.g. local
economic interests, the annual linguistic meeting

Greenbaum and Quirk (1990:146-147) states that on the basis of this classification, we can
expect the following order:

I + II certain important people

I + III the same restricted income

I + IV your present annual turnover

II + III a funny red hat

II + IV an enormous tidal wave

I + II + IV certain rich American producers

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Order of Adjectives of Quality

Several variations are possible but a fairly usual order is: Adjectives of

a) Size
b) General description (excluding adjectives of personality, emotion etc.)
c) Age
d) Shape
e) Colour
f) Material
g) Origin
h) Purpose (these are generally gerunds used to form compound nouns e.g. walking stick,
riding boots)

a long sharp knife

new hexagonal coins

an old plastic bucket

a small round bath

blue velvet curtains

an elegant French clock

Adjectives of personality/emotion come after adjectives of physical description, including

dark, fair, pale, but before colours:

a small suspicious official

a pale anxious girl

an inquisitive brown dog

a long patient queue (Thompson and Martinet, 2011:35)

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Order of Adjectives before Nouns

When several adjectives come before a noun, or when nouns arte used to modify another
noun, hey usually have to be put in a particular order. For instance, when we say: a fat old
lady, not: an old fat lady; a small shiny black leather handbag, not: a leather black shiny
small handbag. Unfortunately, the rules for adjective order are very complicated and different
grammars disagree about the details. Swan (1995:14-15) lists some of the most important
rules:

1. Colour, Order, Material and Purpose

Adjectives or modifying nouns of colour, origin, material and purpose usually go in
that order.

Colour Origin Material Purpose Noun

red Spanish leather riding boots
a brown German beer mug
a Venetian glass glower vase

2. Other Adjectives
Other adjectives usually go before words of colour, origin, material and purpose. It is
impossible to give exact rules, but adjectives of size, length and height often come
first.
the round glass table (not: the glass round table)
a big, modern brick house (not: a modern, big brick house)
long, flexible steel poles
a tall, ancient oak tree

3. Judgments and Attitudes

Adjectives which express judgments or attitudes usually come before all others. E.g.
lovely, definite, pure, absolute, extreme, prefect, wonderful, silly
a lovely, long cool drink
Who’s that silly fat man over there?

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4. Numbers
Numbers usually go before adjectives.
six large eggs
the second big shock
First, next and last most often go before one, two, three, etc.
the first three days ( more common than the three first days)
my last two jobs

5. Commas
Before nouns, we generally use commas between adjectives (especially in longer
sequences) which give similar kinds of information, for example in physical
descriptions.
a lovely, long, cool, refreshing drink
an expensive, ill-planned, wasteful project

But commas can be dropped before short common adjectives

a tall(,) dark (,) handsome cowboy

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Position of Adjectives in a Series

Adjectives in a series tend to occur in a certain order, though there are frequent exceptions.

Raimes (1992) gives us an example of the usual order of adjectives. The order is as follows:
(Raimes, 1992:101)

Table 1

The Usual Order of Adjectives

Usual Order of Adjectives

Determiner Opinion Physical Description Nationality Religion Material Noun Head
Noun
Size Shape Age Colour
Three beautiful old houses
My long blue silk evening gown
A delicious French meal
Her big old English oak writing desk
Lee’s charming catholic teacher
Several little round marble coffee tables

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Leech et al (2001) also provides us with an example of the order of adjectives which is
normally preferred. This example is as follows:

(Leech et al. 2001:15)

Table 2
The Order of Adjectives

Adjectives Noun
Describing Size Age Colour defining
or
expressing
a feeling
A beautiful Green Indian carpet
An old Black horse
A tall medical worker
Those funny little flowers

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 3. CORPUS FINDINGS

Corpus findings 1

According to https://www.english-corpora.org/iweb/

The site https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/adjectives-order.htm states the following

about the order of adjectives:

Adjective Order

There are 2 basic positions for adjectives:

1. Adjective Before Noun

2. Adjective After Verb

adj. adj.
before after
noun verb

1 I have a Big dog.

2 Snow is white.

Adjective Before Noun

We often use more than one adjective before the noun:

 I like big black.dogs.

 She was wearing a beautiful long red dress.

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What is the correct order for two or more adjectives?

1. First of all, the general order is:

opinion, fact

"Opinion" is what you think about something. "Fact" is what is definitely true about
something.

 a lovely new dress (not a new lovely dress)

 a boring French film (not a French boring film)

2. The "normal" order for fact adjectives is

size, shape, age, colour / origin / material / purpose

 a small 18th-century French coffee table

 a rectangular black wooden box

3. Determiners usually come first, even though some grammarians regard them as fact
adjectives:

 Articles (a, the)

 Possessives (my, your...)

 Demonstratives (this, that...)

 Quantifiers (some, any, few, many...)

 Numbers (one, two, three)

Note that when we want to use two colour adjectives, we join them with "and":

 Many newspapers are black and white.

 She was wearing a long, blue and yellow dress.

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Here are some examples of adjective order:

Adjectives

fact adjectives

size,
shape,
opinion age, head
determiner adjectives other colour origin material purpose* noun

Two Ugly black guard dogs

A well- Chinese artist

known

A small, French coffee table

18th-
century

Your fabulous new sports car

A Lovely pink and Thai silk dress

green

Some black Spanish leather riding boots

A big black dog

and white

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 Adjectives

fact adjectives

size,
shape,
opinion age, head
determiner adjectives other colour origin material purpose* noun

This cheap plastic rain coat

An old wooden fishing boat

My new tennis racket

A wonderful 15th- Arabic poem

century

*often a noun used as an adjective

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Not all grammarians agree about the exact order of adjectives, and the detailed rules are
complicated. He rules on this page are for the normal, “natural” order of adjectives. These
rules are not rigid, and you may sometimes wish to change the order for emphasis. Consider
the following conversations:

Conversation A:

A: “I want to buy a round table.”

B: “Do you want a new round table or an old round table?”

Conversation B:

A: “I want to buy an old table.”

B: “Do you want a round old table or a square old table?”

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Corpus findings 2

The site:

https://www.englishgrammar101.com/module-6/modifiers-adjectives-and-adverbs/lesson-
4/order-of-adjectives states the following bout the the order of adjectives

In sentences, adjectives are usually found before the nouns they modify, but they may also
come after the noun if separated by commas, or they may come after a linking verb.

- Adjectives before the noun:

The fluffy white clouds floated across the sky.

- Adjectives after the noun:

Adjectives can be moved to immediately after the noun if commas are placed around them.
This can be very effective.

The clouds, white and fluffy, floated across the sky.

- Adjectives after the verb:

Subject complements that are adjectives are predicate adjectives. Predicate adjectives come
after a linking verb.

The clouds were fluffy and white.

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In English syntax, adjectives belong in a certain order:

Determiners Quantifiers Opinions Facts

Physical traits

Noun as adjective
Determinatives

Purpose/Kind
Length/shape
Possessives

evaluation

Condition
Sequence
Amounts

Opinions
Numbers

Material
Articles

Pattern
Colour

Origin
Size

Age
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
the two comfortable Old blue recliner chairs
my many Faithful, Big black spotted Labrador

retrievers
friendly

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Corpus findings 3

The site:

http://www2.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/stonebrink/ESL022/Paired%20Adjectives.htm
states the following about the order of adjectives

Order of Adjectives & Comma Use with Paired Adjectives

In English, it is common to use more than one adjective before a noun.

For example, we can write "He's a funny young boy," or "She's a smart, energetic woman."

When you use more than one adjective, you have to put them in the right order, according to
type.

It is correct to write, "I have a small red car", but it is not correct to write, "I have a red small
car".

When you use two adjectives together, you sometimes use "and" between them and you
sometimes don't.

When you use two adjectives together (also called paired adjectives), you sometimes use a
comma between them and sometimes don't use a comma.

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Types of Adjectives – OSASCOMP

Often, the acronym “OSASCMP” may be used in on order for us to remember the sequence.

Type Definition and Examples

Opinion An opinion adjective explains what you think about something
Examples: funny, beautiful, fabulous, difficult
Size A size adjective tells you how big or small something is.

Examples: large, tiny, enormous, little

Age An age adjective gives information about how old something is.

Examples: ancient, new, young, old

Shape A shape adjective describes the physical form or outline of something.

Examples: square, round, flat, rectangular

Colour A color adjective describes the color of something.

Examples: blue, pink, reddish, gray

Origin An origin (or nationality) adjective describes where something comes from.

Examples: Mexican, Chinese, eastern, northern, lunar, solar

Material A material adjective describes what something is made from.

Examples: wooden, metal, cotton, paper, stone

Purpose A purpose adjective describes what something is used for.

These adjectives often end with "-ing".

Examples: sleeping (as in "sleeping bag"), roasting (as in "roasting pan")

Order of Adjectives - OSASCOMP

Although there are exceptions, the general order of adjectives in a pair or series is as follows:

Determiner Opinion Size Age Shape Color Origin Material Purpose noun
a/an/the Handso youn German man
me g
one/two/three huge round metal bowls
this/that Smart little girl
my/yours/his old red sleeping bag

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 4. CONCLUSION

The end of this final paper will serve as a final summarization of what has been presented and
whether the initial goal was reached. It can be concluded that even though there are not any
strict rules for the order of adjectives in the English noun phrase, there are more or less typical
guidelines for the usual order of the aforementioned adjectives. This order is as follows:
opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose, in the form of the acronym
OSASCOMP. From the many tables and examples of this paper we see that this order is not
fixed, and whilst native speakers of English recognize when adjectives are out of order,
students learning English must study the sequences.

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Sažetak završnog rada

U ovom završnom radu detaljno je objašnjeno šta je imenska fraza na engleskom jeziku te
uloga pridjeva u toj imenskoj frazi (noun phrase), tačnije, redoslijed pridjeva u istoj.

Objšnjena je imenica, imenska fraza, dijelovi imenske fraze, te sintaktičke uloge imenskih
fraza. Jasno su razgraničene premodifikacije i četiri kategorije koje se nalaze između
determinanata i glavne riječi, iz razloga što različiti pridjevi popunjavaju više različitih
kategorija.

Uobičajeni redoslijed za pridjeve koji dolaze prije imenice većinom se nižu sljedećim
redoslijedom: mišljenje, veličina, oblik, boja, porijeklo, materijal i svrha. Varijacije u ovoj
sekvenci postoje, razni gramatičari ili dodaju ili oduzmu određenu kategoriju, ovisno o
rečenici.

Pored objašnjenja redoslijeda pridjeva u imenskoj frazi, kao i mogućih varijacija tog
redoslijeda, prikazani su i primjeri iz korpusa odnosno jasno su formirane tabele koje sadrže
mnogobrojne primjere riječi i rečenica koje prikazivaju redoslijed pridjeva u imenskoj frazi u
rečenicama različitog konteksta.

U zaključku ovog diplomskog rada potvrđeno je uspješno ostvarivanje cilja koji je bio da se
prikaže redoslijed pridjeva u imeskoj frazi u engleskom jeziku kao centralne teme, te da se taj
redoslijed uporedi sa mogućim varijacijama i da se prikažu primjeri iz korpusa, čime se dobija
jasna slika o svim mogućim varijacijama redoslijeda pridjeva u imenskoj frazi engleskog
jezika i razjašnjavaju moguće nejasnoće u okviru samog redoslijeda pridjeva u imenskoj frazi.

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REFERENCES

Biber, D. et al. (1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Essex: Pearson
Education Limited.

Greenbaum, S. Quirk R. (1990) A Student’s Grammar of the English Language. Essex:

Pearson Education Limited.

Huddleston, R. Pullum, G.K. (2005) A Student’s Introduction to English Grammar.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Leech, G. Svartvik, I. (1994) A Communicative Grammar of English. 2nd ed. Essex: Longman
Group Limited.

Leech, G. et al (2001) A A-Z of English Grammar & Usage. Essex: Pearson Education
Limited.

Quirk, R. et al (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Essex: Longman

Group Limited.

Raimes, A. (1992) Grammar Troublespots – An Editing Guide for Students. 2nd ed. New
York: St. Martin’s Press.

Swan, M. (1995) Practical English Usage. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Internet sources:

https://www.english-corpora.org/iweb/ (Accessed on July 7, 2019)

https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/adjectives-order.htm (Accessed on July 7, 2019)

https://www.englishgrammar101.com/module-6/modifiers-adjectives-and-adverbs/lesson-
4/order-of-adjectives (Accessed on July 7, 2019)

http://www2.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/stonebrink/ESL022/Paired%20Adjectives.htm
(Accessed on July 7, 2019)

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