Over the last month, Ray has been learning to string adjectives together to describe nouns. For example, he has always been rather fond of garbage cans. A month ago (or so) he started calling them by a single adjective only — no noun (for example, “new” or “green”.) A little while later, he started to put the adjective with the noun (e.g. “new garbage can,” or “green garbage can.”)
Lately, he’s been running multiple adjectives together: “new green garbage can,” “old green garbage can,” etc.
Amy has noted that when he hits about 3 or 4 adjectives, he starts to lose track of the order. So, “two new green garbage cans” sometimes comes out as “green two new garbage cans.”
The amazing thing about all this is that he recognizes when they are out of order and struggles to assemble all the words into the proper syntax: “two new green garbage cans.” And he knows when he gets it right.
Often, midway through the phrase, he will insert a “dump, dump, dump,” or “garbage truck” to describe what he saw happen to the garbage cans earlier in the day. When he gets tired and starts putting all the words together into nonsensical strings, it is quite amusing.
I guess it had never occurred to me that adjective types had an order. “Two new green garbage cans” sounds more natural than “two green new garbage cans,” but I didn’t know there were rules that governed the order.
The University of Victoria’s ESL web site was the first hit on a Google search for “order of adjectives” — their 410 Grammar: Adjective Order lesson describes the different types of adjectives and what order they go in.
Opinion: An opinion adjective explains what you think about something (other people may not agree with you).
Size: A size adjective, of course, tells you how big or small something is.
Age: An age adjective tells you how young or old something or someone is.
Shape: A shape adjective describes the shape of something.
Colour: A colour adjective, of course, describes the colour of something.
Origin: An origin adjective describes where something comes from.
Material: A material adjective describes what something is made from.
Purpose: A purpose adjective describes what something is used for. These adjectives often end with “-ing”.
According to them, age comes before color, so “new green garbage can” is proper. So, Ray’s favorite thing right now is the “cool, big, new, rectangular, green, American, plastic, dumping garbage can.”
