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Co-occuring adjectives
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A noun can be preceded by a list consisting of several adjectives, each of which selects a nominal complement. This phenomenon, referred to as stacking, must be distinguished from coordination. The word order among a number of stacked adjectives is in part determined by the semantic class to which each adjective belongs.

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A noun can be preceded by a list consisting of several adjectives, each of which selects a nominal complement. This phenomenon is referred to as stacking:

1
In moai lyts antyk read klomp-ke
a nice small antique red clog.DIM.NG
A nice small antique red clog

Interestingly, stacking is characteristic of the attributive construction, and it is unusual in a predicative construction:

2
?It klompke is moai lyts antyk read
the clog is nice small antique red
The clog is nice, small, antique and red

Coordination may also involve a list of several elements. Hence it could be supposed that stacking is related to coordination. It must be noted, however, that not every stacked construction can be converted into a coordination, as shown below:

3
a. In lytse Dútske wein
a small German car
A small German car
b. *In lytse en Dútske wein
a small and German car
A small German car

It seems that coordination requires that both adjectives belong to the same semantic group. In the ungrammatical example, this is not the case: lyts small is a set-denoting adjective and Dútsk German, with its geographical denotation, is a relational adjective. Two set-denoting adjectives can be coordinated:

4
In goedkeape en sunige wein
a cheap and economical car
A cheap and economical car

It seems that coordination is semantically much more constrained than stacking. The order of stacked adjectives is not free, but correlates with the semantic type to which the adjective belongs. The following phrases illustrate that set-denoting adjectives precede relational adjectives:

5
a. In snipper Frysk famke
an neat Frisian girl
A neat Frisian girl
b. *In Frysk snipper famke
a Frisian neat girl
A neat Frisian girl

The following sentences illustrate that evaluative adjectives precede relational adjectives:

6
a. Dy ferjammese Amerikaanske hypoteken
those damned American mortgages
Those damned American mortgages
b. *Dy Amerikaanske ferjammese hypoteken
those American damned mortgages
Those damned American mortgages

The following sentences illustrate that evaluative adjectives precede set-denoting adjectives:

7
a. Dy ferjammese lekke bân
that damned flat tyre
That damned flat tyre
b. *Dy lekke ferjammese bân
that flat damned tyre
That damned flat tyre

The following example contains an adjective of each the three semantic subgroups; any permutation of the three adjectives leads to a degraded result:

8
Dy ferjammese ûnferantwurdlike Amerikaanske hypoteken
those damned irresponsible American mortgages
Those damned irresponsible American mortgages

The following template subsumes the ordering restrictions holding between the three kinds of adjectives: Evaluative < Set-denoting < Relational. Within the class of set-denoting adjectives, subjective adjectives precede non-subjective ones:

9
a. In moaie reade wein
a nice red car
A nice red car
b. ?In reade moaie wein
a red nice car
A nice red car

Within the class of non-subjective set-denoting adjectives, context-dependent adjectives precede those which are independent of context:

10
a. In lyts rûn kontsje
a small round ass
A small round ass
b. ?In rûn lyts kontsje
a round small ass
A small round ass

The following template subsumes the ordering restrictions within the class of set-denoting adjectives: Subjective < Context-dependent < Context-independent.

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