I think one of the attractions kids and teens have with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) is that the name itself is quirky and sounds fun. Those particular words mashed together are sort of an absurdity. An adjective followed by three unlikely juxtaposed nouns -- it's just weird. But is it grammatically correct? I've always thought it to be, until last night when I happened to hear it, and it didn't sound right.
Extended noun phrases are uncommon in English. As I understand it, they are common in Finnish and German (and probably other languages as well). They even remove the spaces between the words of the phrase. In English, though, it sounds, well, "off".
I understand the fun-factor is in itself a marketing tool. Around 1990 a TMNT movie came out. To take advantage of the brand awareness, a commercial bakery began mass-producing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cookies. They came in a bag like Oreos. If that's okay, how far can you take it? Can one speak of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cookies bag? And the bag has a label -- TMNT Cookies bag label??
This is a current topic. I could not find a page talking about the prepackaged, ready-to-eat TMNT cookies already discussed. But I did find this: Betty Crocker Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shell-Shocked Sugar Cookie Mix. (I think I'll buy and make it, and save the BCTMNTSSSCM box. 😍 ) Let's see -- 8 nouns, 1 adjective, and one compound adjective. They are taking the "fun name" concept to a whole new level. But again, can that be correct?
Answer
There are a couple of ways of analyzing the noun phrase 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'.
The first unsatisfying way is to claim that it is a one-time invention or idiom that was created rather desultorily, and as an invention (or idiom) it is correct by fiat. Even though it might be out of order according to conventional rules, it is grammatical because that ordering is the way it is created to be. This is unsatisfying because you are looking for a reason for that particular sequence and this justification works for anything.
The second way, which I think is closer to what you seek, is to analyze according to the rules of ordering adjectives. You can find this addressed quite well here at "What is the rule for adjective order?". To combine the slight variations there, the general rule in English is
article, number, judgement/attitude, size/length/height, age, color, origin, material, purpose, attributive-noun, target noun
All that is needed is to judge each of our modifiers to be these roles.
One may have more than one of each role and then anything goes (subject to vague 'sounds better' rules).
And there may be difficulty in assigning role.
- 'teenage' is pretty obviously an age
- 'mutant' is ... hm, is that an adjective or a noun? If it is an adjective it seems likely to be one of judgement (coming earlier in the order). But it feels more like a noun.
- 'ninja' is a noun, so it acts as an attributive noun here
- 'turtle' is the target noun
If you accept mutant as a noun then teenage comes first, then mutant and ninja could be in either order, followed by turtle. 'Teenage ninja mutant turtles', ignoring the prominence of the existing idiom, I think sounds fine. But the one we hear everyday sounds fine also.
So the end judgement is that the ordering is grammatical.
Of course, your inner assignment of roles to these words may well be different ad that may account for your questioning.
As a side note, newspaper headlines tend to convert numerous qualifiers into a pile-up of attributive nouns which tends to overwhelm our parsing mechanisms, but presumably they are parsable somehow to be considered 'correct' as in "Slough sausage choke baby death woman jailed". TMNT is just a large mouthful to swallow and because of that sounds 'off'.
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