Question regarding the order of adjectives, strictly for native American English speakers

Question

Greetings!I am a native American English speaker, although, I am interested in the following syntactic aspect, regarding the order of adjectives, as, here in the U.S. (Savannah, GA, to be exact), I've come across both versions - what's the correct order of adjectives, in the following question: "a luxury 4-door sedan" or "a 4-door luxury sedan"? The one I've used all my life is: "a 4-door luxury sedan", although, I've heard quite a few people saying "a luxury 4-door sedan", in spite of the fact that the one I've used is much more frequent, here in the U.S., statistically speaking, from what I've seen. I'm not exactly sure which one is syntactically correct and which one of the 2 is the most commonly used phrase, that's why I'm asking this question.My question is strictly for native American English speakers, as myself. All help would be greatly appreciated.Thank you anticipatedly,The Unknown One

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

I'm not convinced that this question involves syntax as much as semantics. What follows is a long series of comments rather than a definitive answer for you.

We put the adjectives in order of how closely connected they are to the essence of the noun they describe. This can be a matter of opinion in some cases, and I think this may be one of them.

Is it a luxury sedan first, and it just happens to have four doors? That's a 4-door luxury sedan.
Is it a 4-door sedan first, and it just happens to be a luxury sedan? That's a luxury 4-door sedan.

Personally, I think that having four doors is more intrinsic to any car than the luxury it may convey to an observer, so if I were being strictly logical, I'd go for luxury four-door sedan. Even so, in the world of advertising I think it might be important to leave the technical detail about the four doors farther from the noun and treat luxury as the essence of the sedan. That makes me think that four-door luxury sedanmight be the more effective phrase if for nothing more than to encourage sales.

If you check this out on the Google Ngrams Viewer you'll see that luxury four-door sedan was more frequently used than four-door luxury sedan only for a few years around 1960. Other than in that short period, four-door luxury sedan has always been used more often. As you have already mentioned, both are still in use today.

CJ

AlpheccaStars · Answer

Dear unknown;

There is a natural order of adjectives in English, and American and British varieties use the same "formula". This formula applied to your adjectives yields "luxury 4-door sedan".

However, language is a flexible organic type of subject, with "rules" that are often broken, unlike math with hard and fast rules.

Here are some references and a Khan Academy video on the subject.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/adjectives-order
https://www.gingersoftware.com/content/grammar-rules/adjectives/order-of-adjectives/
https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/what-is-the-word-order-of-adjectives-/4775294.html

https://youtu.be/7sHbB9VQBgo

Determiner
Opinion - luxury
Size - 4-door
Age
Shape
color
Origin
material
purpose
noun - sedan

The image is a screen shot from the video.

Anonymous · Answer

Thank you kindly for all the answers!

Anonymous · Answer

I appreciate it.

The Unknown One

Anonymous · Answer

P.S. : which one of the two SOUNDS more correct, to you? Personally, like I said, I've used "a 4-door luxury sedan" all my life, yet, "a luxury 4-door sedan" would be more formally correct. Still, it doesn't SOUND right to me, in spite of the fact that it follows the formally correct principle of the order of American English adjectives. I'm just curious to know, that's all.

The Unknown

The Unknown One

Question regarding the order of adjectives, strictly for native American English speakers

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