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Can you do that, modify a noun by mixing modifiers?

Say, something like this:

昨日買ったきれいな白い夫子の帽子

  1. 昨日買った
  2. きれいな
  3. しろい
  4. 夫子の

each is modifying 帽子.

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    What is 夫子? ---
    – Chocolate ♦
    Dec 19, 2020 at 3:10
  • @Chocolate it means "teacher". I just wrote whatever first came to mind, it doesn't matter.
    – LonelyDriver
    Dec 19, 2020 at 12:19
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    夫子 wouldn't be understood as "teacher." I suggest you use 先生 instead.
    – Chocolate ♦
    Dec 19, 2020 at 15:54

2 Answers 2

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I think you can do it but it can get tricky when chaining multiple modifiers. There’s a famous garden-path sentence demonstrating this ambiguity in Japanese:

頭が赤い魚を食べた猫

It can be parsed in at least five different ways depending on which word or clause modifies what. enter image description here

source: https://nihongonosensei.net/?p=7442

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  • Thanks. That's informative and hilarious.
    – LonelyDriver
    Dec 19, 2020 at 16:24
2

Found the answer in Basic Japanese A Grammar and Workbook By Shoko Hamano, Takae Tsujioka , p.30

You can combine noun-modifying clauses with the other types of modifiers. Remember to keep the modified noun at the end of the noun phrase.

僕が作ったヘルシーな野菜のピザ

[boku ga tsukutta] [herushii-na] [yasai-no] pizza

“the healthy vegetable pizza that I made”

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    Note that alternative parsing is possible: 僕が作った could refer to the 野菜 rather than the ピザ. Also, it isn't clear whether ヘルシーな applies to the 野菜 or the ピザ (although in this case, the meaning doesn't change much either way).
    – Eiríkr Útlendi
    Dec 21, 2020 at 17:28

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