The Order of Adjectives in a Series docx

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The Order of Adjectives in a Series docx

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The Order of Adjectives in a Series It would take a linguistic philosopher to explain why we say "little brown house" and not "brown little house" or why we say "red Italian sports car" and not "Italian red sports car." The order in which adjectives in a series sort themselves out is perplexing for people learning English as a second language. Most other languages dictate a similar order, but not necessarily the same order. It takes a lot of practice with a language before this order becomes instinctive, because the order often seems quite arbitrary (if not downright capricious). There is, however, a pattern. You will find many exceptions to the pattern in the table below, but it is definitely important to learn the pattern of adjective order if it is not part of what you naturally bring to the language. The categories in the following table can be described as follows: THE ROYAL ORDER OF ADJECTIVES Determiner >Observation >size >shape >age >colour >Origin >Material >Qualifier >NOUN Determiners — articles and other limiters. See Determiners Observation — postdeterminers and limiter adjectives (e.g., a real hero, a perfect idiot) and adjectives subject to subjective measure (e.g., beautiful, interesting) Size and Shape — adjectives subject to objective measure (e.g., wealthy, large, round) Age — adjectives denoting age (e.g., young, old, new, ancient) Color — adjectives denoting color (e.g., red, black, pale) Origin — denominal adjectives denoting source of noun (e.g., French, American, Canadian) Material — denominal adjectives denoting what something is made of (e.g., woolen, metallic, wooden) Qualifier — final limiter, often regarded as part of the noun (e.g., rocking chair, hunting cabin, passenger car, book cover) (Posted by David L. UK) Word Order for Adjectives Exercise(with answers) OPINION CONDITION SIZE AGE COLOUR ORIGIN MATERIAL NOUN 1 My smelly old maths teacher my teacher old maths smelly 2 a small old black Turkish box black small box Turkish a old 3 a friendly fat young man man a fat friendly young 4 our boring tall headmaster tall our headmaster boring 5 a long dark wooden table wooden dark a table long 6 a beautiful old Spanish city city a Spanish beautiful old 7 our nice French arts teacher arts nice teacher our French 8 a perfect new system new a perfect system 9 a fantastic 18th century Scottish castle 18th century a Scottish fantastic castle 10 a horrible greedy businessman a business horrible greedy 11 a big old brown bear a big old brown bear 12 a self-righteous middle-class student student self-righteous a middle-class 13 a nasty spoilt little boy spoilt boy nasty a little 14 a gorgeous black-haired green-eyed girl green-eyed gorgeous black-haired a girl . Most other languages dictate a similar order, but not necessarily the same order. It takes a lot of practice with a language before this order becomes instinctive, because the order often seems. pattern of adjective order if it is not part of what you naturally bring to the language. The categories in the following table can be described as follows: THE ROYAL ORDER OF ADJECTIVES. Italian sports car" and not "Italian red sports car." The order in which adjectives in a series sort themselves out is perplexing for people learning English as a second language.

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