All these details are boring but unavoidable to make the structure more formal and accurate. The 'beautiful' adjective, on the other hand, is quite interesting in the making of the image. It is not a piece of evidence but it is simply an opinion that could differ from any one else's. The rule says that the opinion is always initial when a range of adjectives are used that's why the speaker places his 'beautiful' opinion adjective first. The adjective describes it as beautiful and this opinion is essentially contributing in depicting an almost complete picture. And that's not all. Our sentence is able to bear as more adjectives as we wish but under the very specific conditions we are trying to clarify here. Now let's go on imagining this famous car as being made in Japan. How can the speaker introduce this new important information?
Yesterday, I bought a beautiful, small, red, Japanese car.
The beautiful small car is made in Japan, which we didn't know before the use of the adjective «Japanese». It improves the picture of the car in our minds and also in the way we conceive the object. The car hasn't got an American or European origin. It is simply Japanese. The newly introduced adjective has to be placed at the end of the list of adjectives already stated. However, it is not the last in the order. Another adjective, notably the one which gives us information about the material with which the car was constructed, is the last ring of the chain. That's amazing, isn't it? Let's go on with it and see the way we are placing the new adjective, Yesterday, I bought a beautiful, small, red, Japanese, plastic car.
We've finally reached a quite complete image of this famous car. In English it is not, normally, allowed to go beyond these five adjectives in a sentence. Their variety is supposed to be enough to make any described object lavishly clear. Therefore, any more adjectives of quality in one single sentence generally lead to ambiguity or distortion of the image. That's greatly enough like this. The construction of a syntactically correct structure of a sentence, in which the adjectives are the basis of transmitting a complete clear message, implies the use of the specific number of adjectives; each of which has to refer you to a piece of information complete in itself but a brick completing the others. It means that no adjectives of the same category should be used more than once. Once these rules are respected, not only will adjectives make your sentences correct and clear, but they also will decorate them and make them look formal and adept. With this order in mind, you can make as many sentences as you wish. You will successfully express yourself formally if you follow the correct order of the adjectives in the sentence. This classification system is not negotiable, however. You cannot break it unless you speak or write to someone who doesn't know exactly what a FORMAL sentence looks like.
Examples:
*/ There is a lovely, large, multicolour, Moroccan, woollen carpet in my room.
*/ She was wearing an attractive, long, auburn, Indian, silky dress.
As you can see in these sentences, as well as in the former ones, each pair of adjectives is separated by a comma (,). When there are more than one adjective before the noun in a sentence, we usually use commas except for adjectives of colour which we separate by «and» instead. e.g.:
A black and white Djellaba
A blue, white and red flag.
Adjectives are used to carry the specific meaning we intend to convey in many different ways. I mean that the same adjective can have more than one meaning depending on the context. It is not the same in all situations. The adjectives of quality have the ability as to «metamorphose» in their implications once their context has been changed. I mean that they can go from the proper meaning to the figurative one and the same adjective can mean two different things in two different contexts. For example the adjective «pretty» means «attractive» but in another context, it means «fine or good». The adjective «rich», also, has got this quality. It can be used for more than one meaning. Here is a usual example:
1. That's a rich man. (He is wealthy; he's got a lot of money).
2. That's a rich book. (There are a lot of interesting ideas and insights in it).
Sometimes the adjectives turn to be rigid and one adjective is used only for specific purpose and cannot be used for others though they share the same quality. Look at this example:
-/ My uncle is the tall man in the middle.
A man is «tall»; but what about a building or a mountain? Can we attribute the adjective «tall» to them, too? No, another adjective is quite more suitable because it is more expressive and accurate in this situation, it is «high»:
-/ A high building / mountain.
3. Grammatical overview of English Adjectives
There is not much to be said about the English adjective from the grammatical point of view. As is well know, it has neither number, nor case, nor gender distinctions. Some adjectives have, however, degrees of соmparisоn, which make part of the morphological system of a language. Thus, the English adjective differs materially not only from such highly inflected languages as Russian. Latin, and German, where the adjectives have a rather complicated sуstem оf fоrms, but even fгоm Modern French, which h as preserved number and gender distinсtiоns to the present day (сf. masculine singular grand, masculine plural grands, feminine singular grande, feminine plural grandes 'large').
By what signs do we then, recognize an adjective as such in Modern Eng1ish? In most cases this сan be dоne оn1у bу taking into account semantic and sуntасtiсal phenomena. But in some cases, that is for certain adjeсtives, derivative suffixes are significant, too. Among these are the suffix - less (as in useless), the suffix - like (as in ghostlike), and a few others. Occasionally, however, though a suffix often appears in adjectives, it cannot be taken as a certain proof of the word being an adjective, because the suffix may also make part of a word belonging to another part of speech. Thus, the suffix - full would seem to be typically adjectival, as is its antonym - less. In faсt we find the suffix - full in adjectives often enough, as in beautiful, useful, purposeful, meaningful, etc. But alongside of these we also find spoonful. mouthful, handfu1, etc., which are nouns.
Оn the whole, the numbeг оf adjectives which сan be recognized, as such by their suffix seems to be insignificant as compared with the mass of English adjectives. B. Ilyish, The Structure of Modern English, p.58 All the adjectives are traditionally divided into two large subclasses: qualitative and relative.
Relative adjectives express such properties of a substance as are determined by the direct relation of the substance to some other substance.
E.g.: wood - a wooden hut; mathematics - mathematical precision; history - a historical event;
table - tabular presentation; colors - colored postcards;
surgery - surgical treatment; the Middle Ages - mediaeval rites.
The nature of this «relationship» in adjectives is best revealed by definitional correlations. Cf.: a wooden hut - a hut made of wood; a historical event - an event referring to a certain period of history; surgical treatment - treatment consisting in the implementation of surgery; etc.
Qualitative adjectives, as different from relative ones, denote various qualities of substances which admit of a quantitative estimation, i.e. of establishing their correlative quantitative measure. The measure of a quality can be estimated as high or low, adequate or inadequate, sufficient or insufficient, optimal or excessive. Cf.: an awkward situation - a very awkward situation; a difficult task - too difficult a task; an enthusiastic reception - rather an enthusiastic reception; a hearty welcome - not a very hearty welcome; etc.
In this connection, the ability of an adjective to form degrees of comparison is usually taken as a formal sign of its qualitative character, in opposition to a relative adjective which is understood as incapable of forming degrees of comparison by definition. Cf.: a pretty girl - a prettier girl; a quick look - a quicker look; a hearty welcome - the heartiest of welcomes; a bombastic speech - the most bombastic speech.
However, in actual speech the described principle of distinction is not at all strictly observed, which is noted in the very grammar treatises putting it forward. Two typical cases of contradiction should be pointed out here.
In the first place, substances can possess such qualities as are incompatible with the idea of degrees of comparison. Accordingly, adjectives denoting these qualities, while belonging to the qualitative subclass, are in the ordinary use incapable of forming degrees of comparison. Here refer adjectives like extinct, immobile, deaf, final, fixed, etc.
In the second place, many adjectives considered under the heading of relative still can form degrees of comparison, thereby, as it were, transforming the denoted relative property of a substance into such as can be graded quantitatively. Cf.: a mediaeval approach-rather a mediaeval approach - a far more mediaeval approach; of a military design - of a less military design - of a more military design;
a grammatical topic ~ a purely grammatical topic - the most grammatical of the suggested topics.
In order to overcome the demonstrated lack of rigour in the definitions in question, we may introduce an additional linguistic distinction which is more adaptable to the chances of usage. The suggested distinction is based on the evaluative function of adjectives. According as they actually give some qualitative evaluation to the substance referent or only point out its corresponding native property, all the adjective functions may be grammatically divided into «evaluative» and «specificative». In particular, one and the same adjective, irrespective of its being basically (i.e. in the sense of the fundamental semantic property of its root constituent) «relative» or «qualitative», can be used either in the evaluative function or in the specificative function.
For instance, the adjective good is basically qualitative. On the other hand, when employed as a grading term in teaching, i.e. a term forming part of the marking scale together with the grading terms bad, satisfactory, excellent, it acquires the said specificative value; in other words, it becomes a specificative, not an evaluative unit in the grammatical sense (though, dialectically, it does signify in this case a lexical evaluation of the pupil's progress). Conversely, the adjective wooden is basically relative, but when used in the broader meaning «expressionless» or «awkward» it acquires an evaluative force and, consequently, can presuppose a greater or lesser degree («amount») of the denoted properly in the corresponding referent. E.g.:
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