Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

It was J.R.R. Tolkien who first wrote, in a reminiscence of his childhood and of an early effort at fantasy writing, that one cannot refer in English to a "green great dragon." Size must come before color. It must be a great green dragon. He also expressed his continuing puzzlement, as boy and man, about this philological fact. Recently, someone among my FB friends posted a photo of a book, author unspecified and unknown to me, which addresses the point more comprehensively. According to this unsourced book, the proper list is: opinion, size, age, shape, color,  origin, material, purpose Noun. So one could encounter a terrifying great ancient smooth-lined green demon-sired flesh-and-blood gold-guarding dragon. Then presumably edit down the adjectives to just two, keeping the order. Is this a Chomskyan thing or a Skinnerian thing? If different languages have different preferred adjective orders then we might describe this as a Skinnerian discovery. The 'proper...

That headline may get me some clicks. A facebook friend recently shared these words of wisdom about our language, and I can't do better today than to quote them: The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful of Chaucerian, Shakespearean, Miltonic, Johnsonian, Dickensian and American. Military, naval, legal, corporate, criminal, jazz, rap and ghetto discourses are mingled at every turn. The French language, like Paris, has attempted, through its Academy, to retain its purity, to fight the advancing tides of Franglais and international prefabrication. English, by comparison, is a shameless whore. The words are those of Stephen Fry, in THE ODE LESS TRAVELLED (2005).