student asking question

Is there any specific rule to place all the adjectives "next", "great", "American"? Can I say "the great next American novel" as well?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

Good question! The main adjective here is "American" since it creates the term "American novel". After "American", all other adjectives describing the noun "novel" must be placed before "American novel". There is not really a rule for the order of these in a sentence, however, in this case, it would sound unnatural to say "the great next American novel". This is because "the next great" is a common phrase used to introduce a specific noun as something which may become new and popular. So in this context, "next" must come before "great".

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