Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 197):
We have referred above to the syntagmatic potential of the nominal group: how the grammar builds up the representation of a thing, expanding outwards by modification. For example:
The expansion proceeds by adding qualities; these qualities, as we have seen, are typically ordered in English from right to left according to the degree of systemicity, with the most systemic (most permanent, least particularised) at the right, the most instantial (least permanent, most particularised) at the left. Broadly speaking these are distributed by the grammar into distinct functions as Classifier, Epithet, Numerative, and Deictic.