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The Significance of Word Order in English Grammar

The English language is a notoriously complicated thing, and there are many aspects of it which linguists are still trying to explain. One of these things is the significance of how we naturally organize words in a sentence, particularly adjectives. Adjective order is one thing that native English speakers mainly learn by ear, and when something is described in an unusual order, it can often sound unnatural or strange, and we can’t easily explain why. This structure is intuitive to native English speakers, and while linguists have determined what the natural adjective order is, there are many different theories of why this order exists.

The exact adjective order seems to vary slightly depending on whom you ask, but according to psychology professor Chris Westbury, the adjective order is “value, dimension, physical property, speed, human propensity, age and color.” So while we don’t frequently need that many adjectives in front of a noun, the theoretical order would go something like this: the beautiful little light quick hard-working old white sewing machine. One of the things most linguists can agree on is that opinion comes first in this list, without much variation. Something even more interesting, though, is the fact that “we continually find the same preferences across the world’s languages”(Scontras et al). This implies that there is something about this particular order that most languages have all found useful enough to develop the same patterns. For once, this isn’t a strange detail unique to English, and there must be a deeper reason as to why these adjective orders have developed in other languages as well.

There are even more theories as to why this order exists than there are variations of what the order actually is. This is because linguists can’t go back in time to see why languages evolved the way they did; they can only speculate as to what the most practical reason could have been. One recent theory by Chris Westbury is that “prenominal adjective order reflects likely need, the a priori probability that a particular adjective will be needed,” which essentially means that adjectives are ordered the way they are because each one can predict the next, to an extent, based on context and the specificity of each adjective in relation to what it is modifying. Some adjectives are used almost exclusively to describe particular nouns, such as the adjective “tillable,” in which case the most likely words to follow would be either “ground” or “soil” because those are the words that are used most frequently following “tillable” and make the most sense in that context.

Similarly, certain adjectives sort of go together better than others, and some become familiar phrases that roll off the tongue easily because they can describe a variety of things. For example, the phrases “pretty little thing” or “shiny new phone” follow this pattern and sound pleasant, and the adjectives sort of predict each other due to their similarities and connotations. The word “shiny” predicts that the following word could be “new” because new things are often shiny. Similarly, while not all pretty things are little and not all little things are pretty, the word “pretty” has connotations and associations which frequently imply daintiness, so it only makes sense that “little” would follow. Additionally, the words “pretty” and “shiny” are more subjective than “little” or “new” so they are set further apart from the nouns being modified.

On the other hand, there are also recent contrasting approaches that have argued that the primary factor that predicts adjective order depends on whether a new concept is formed when an adjective is combined with a noun. Whereas the last theory involves the ideas of familiarity and commonality, this one hinges on the idea that adjectives are meant to change the effect of the noun they are modifying. For example, the phrase “young puppy” is redundant because a puppy is, by definition, a young dog. More productive adjectives would add to or change the way this puppy is perceived by the audience. The order of adjectives in a sentence would continuously build upon the foundation that each preceding adjective has already established for creating a particular image of the modified noun. UC Irvine professors Scontras, Degen, and Goodman conducted research to investigate a series of hypotheses about adjective order, and they found that “subjectivity has greater predicting power.” On top of that, “An adjective’s semantics predicts its distance from the modified noun, such that less subjective adjectives occur linearly closer to nouns they modify” (Scontras et al). This falls in line with Westbury’s theory about predicting adjective order, but it revolves more around the subjectivity of the adjectives, rather than the specificity. Scontras speculates that this preference is likely because people prefer to place less subjective adjectives closer to the nouns they are describing in order to improve clarity for the intended audience. This could be because the subjective adjective carries less weight in the audience’s mind when it is located further away from the noun which it is describing. A more objective adjective might be located closer to the noun it’s modifying because it is an inherent quality of the noun, and it could have had an influence on the evolution of language because it changed how a message is interpreted by the audience.

Another interesting aspect of adjective order in English is the existence of the Big Mess Construction, or BMC. According to Timothy Osborne, a professor at Zhejiang University, “The normal position of an attributive adjective is after the determiner and before the noun, but in the BMC, the adjective precedes the determiner.” The name presumably originated from the phrase ‘so big a mess,’ but the BMC can also be found in phrases such as ‘that strange a sound’ or ‘too lame an excuse.’ The strange thing about the BMC is that the adjective comes before the article, and this only occurs in specific circumstances, which often involve the implication of contrast in the sentence. Additionally, the BMC can also optionally include the preposition ‘of,’ such as in the phrase ‘too big of a deal,’ without changing the meaning or format of the phrase. Osborne claims that the sentence can be structured this way yet still function normally because “the adjective is in fact the root/head of the BMC phrase.” Osborne speculates that this is perhaps due to the way the words ‘too,’ ‘so,’ or ‘that’ make the adjective shift its status to a “noun-like word.” He further explains that a similar shift happens with phrases like ‘the rich,’ ‘the worthy,’ or ‘the bold’ in which the definite article ‘the’ triggers a categorical shift from adjective to noun phrase. In this case, the article influences the placement of the adjective, which sort of disregards the previously observed rules of adjective order.

Adjective order in English is an oddly complicated yet flexible formation that can change the way a sentence is interpreted by the audience. Native English speakers know this order intuitively because we hear sentences phrased in similar ways and pick up on the patterns subconsciously. This can be more difficult for English learners because they sort of have to memorize the order instead of picking up on it gradually, and they might not notice a mistake that sounds odd to a native speaker. And as is common in English, there are often exceptions to the rules of adjective order, such as the BMC, which make it more difficult to learn how to properly formulate a sentence clearly. Regardless, adjective order is yet another intricate aspect of the English language that has a deeper reason than one might initially assume.

Works Cited

Scontras, Gregory, et al. “Subjectivity Predicts Adjective Ordering Preferences.” MIT Press, MIT Press, 1 Feb. 2017, https://direct.mit.edu/opmi/article/1/1/53/2934/Subjectivity-Predicts-Adjective-Ordering.

Westbury, Chris. “Prenominal Adjective Order Is Such a Fat Big Deal Because Adjectives Are Ordered by Likely Need.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review: A Journal of the Psychonomic Society, Inc, vol. 28, no. 1, Feb. 2021, pp. 122–38. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-020-01769-w.

Osborne, Timothy. “Adjectives as Roots of Nominal Groups: The Big Mess Construction in Dependency Grammar.” Folia Linguistica: Acta Societatis Linguisticae Europaeae, vol. 55, no. 1, 2021. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mlf&AN=202122106770&site=ehost-live.