Sind die Kommas in “ein hübsches, schlankes, blondes, deutsches Mädchen” notwendig?
BACKGROUND: In English, it is possible to place several QUALIFYING adjectives before a noun, as in “a beautiful slim blonde German girl”, BUT no commas are needed (or, indeed, possible) between them. That is typical of Germanic languages, in opposition to Romance ones like Spanish, where such sequences are impossible, cf. “*una preciosa esbelta rubia alemana chica”. In Germanic, so the standard explanation goes, nouns need not move leftwards, and qualifying adjectives remain before them = …[A + A + A + N]…, whereas in Romance nouns must generally move leftwards, and series of qualifying adjectives must follow them = …[N+A]+A]+A]… So far, so good. What complicates the picture is that all Romance post-nominal adjectives BUT THE FIRST MUST be separated by commas and/or conjunctions (cf. “una chica ALEMANA, rubia, esbelta, (y) preciosa” vs. “*una chica alemana rubia esbelta preciosa”. This indicates that Romance post-nominal adjectives are, in fact, reduced clauses with invisible subjects co-referring with “chica”. A problem, then, arises in German: if the commas ARE needed in “ein hübsches, schlankes, blondes, deutsches Mädchen”, such adjectives must also at bottom be elliptical clauses with hidden subjects co-referring with “Mädchen” (so the “–es” ending indicates), BUT, if so, the adjectives should have PREDICATIVE form, with NO “–es” ending (cf. “Das Mädchen ist hübsch/*hübsches”), and we should expect “*ein hübsch, schlank, blond, deutschES Mädchen” (note that the adjective closest to the noun needs no comma, as in Spanish), but that is NOT what native speakers do. Summarizing: 1) if the commas ARE needed, then the use of “hübsches”, “schlankes”, etc., rather than “hübsch”, “schlank”,… is unexpected; 2) if the commas are NOT POSSIBLE, German is like English and there is no problem; and 3) if the commas are POSSIBLE, but NOT NECESSARY, then the construction is a theoretical mess requiring urgent clarification, :-).
QUESTION (FOR NATIVE SPEAKERS ONLY!): ARE THE COMMAS NEEDED OR NOT? [Please note that the question concerns ONLY QUALIFYING adjectives; adjectives with deictic, modal or quantificational content must precede qualifying adjectives WITHOUT commas; ignore them here].
Addenda. I'm sorry, this little italki window made me simplify too much in my first sentence and also in point 3): of course, commas/pauses are possible almost everywhere, in all languages, presumably,...., and even between the most tightly-related syntactic elements (e.g., verb and its object, preposition and its object) when speakers want to mark contrasts with respect to preceding discourse (cf., "It is NÉAR, London, but not ÍN, London"; "I did SEE, her but didn't actually TALK, to her", etc.) and when they want to create special stylistic effects (e.g., an emphatic rendition of each of the attributes). The possibility of making such pauses for such reasons is, therefore, irrelevant here. The real issue is whether the comma/pause is OBLIGATORY or not, and the interesting fact, it seems to me, is that the adjective closest to the noun, apparently, need not be followed by a comma/pause, whereas the others (perhaps) MUST be. Correspondingly, the closest adjective following a noun in Spanish (etc.) CANNOT BE PRECEDED by a comma/pause, whereas the following ones may (but need not) be. The reason why that quirk is NOT problematic in Spanish (etc.) is that in Spanish (etc.) predicative adjectives must AGREE with their noun subjects in number and gender, just as attributive ones, and they do [so, OK]; in English, where nouns and adjectives do not visibly agree in ANY case, the possible difficulty cannot arise [so OK, too]; but IN GERMAN, predicative adjectives do NOT agree with their subjects; only attributive ones agree (in gender, number, case) with their head nouns; hence, those adjectives in "ein hübsches, schlankes, .... Mädchen" must be "attributive". But, if so, why does the adjective closest to the noun ("deutsches", in the example) NOT need a comma, whereas the preceding ones MUST be followed by a comma (if they, indeed, must)? Of course, when I said in 3)that the construction is a theoretical mess and should be clarified, I did not mean there is anything "wrong" with it; languages are always "right"; the "mess" is only for us grammarians who try to build elegant theories of a marvellously complex object, :-). Oh, and, pace yujin, in English it is NOT necessary to insert comma/pause between the adjectives in "a beautiful blond girl", although you MAY insert it if you want to create special effects, i.e., for the irrelevant reasons already mentioned.