saro wrote:
if two adjectives are used to describe one noun. Shouldn't there be a comma? Recent,extended sales slump
Hello,
saro. What you are thinking about are
coordinate adjectives, and the rule there is that if you can reverse the order of the adjectives (some sources also say to place "and" between them) without distorting the expression of vital meaning, then you do add a comma. Consider the following sentences:
1) I hope you lead a
long, prosperous life.
2) I hope you lead a
prosperous, long life.
Although I would favor the first sentence since it seems to roll off the tongue a bit better, the two adjectives can be switched seamlessly. Compare to the following two sentences:
1) The
big brown bear attacked the hikers.
2) The
brown big bear attacked the hikers.
The second sentence is the kind that a youngster might utter before a parent would offer a correction (to the first sentence). The adjectives here are fixed. Grammatically, they are known as
cumulative adjectives. In all honesty, there is no particular underlying reason that the second sentence is incorrect. Other languages, such as Japanese, allow for much looser placement of the grammatical components of a sentence. In English, though, this is just how the language has been passed down, and at some point in time, grammarians decided to make up a rule.
Now, looking at the sentence we are dealing with in this SC question, you will notice that we have more than two adjectives. In fact, we have three:
recent extended sales. Even though
sales can be used as a noun, its placement before
slump indicates that it is modifying the slump instead as an adjective. The question is, can we reverse the placement of any of these adjectives?
1)
recent extended sales slump
(This works, since the sentence is discussing an extended slump of some sort, one that has occurred more recently.)
2)
extended recent sales slump
(This will not work in the given context of the sentence, since the sentence is now discussing a recent slump that is being extended.)
3)
recent sales extended slump
4)
extended sales recent slump
5)
sales recent extended slump
6)
sales extended recent slump
The punctuation issue is not really a concern here, given that none of the answer choices opt for commas at the end, but you never know what a different question might spring on you.
Good luck with your studies.
- Andrew
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