Adjectives in the nominative and genitive

Adjectives

Adjectives are words that describes a noun or pronou. Like nouns, adjectives have gender, case, and number; adjectives will have the same gender, case and number as the noun they describe. We previously used the term agreement to refer to subjects and verbs matching in person and number; we also say that adjectives agree with the noun they modify when adjective and noun have the same gender, case and number. As when you identify a noun form, to identify the form of an adjective, you must indicate its gender, case and number.

Dictionary entry

As with nouns, we’ll start by learning to read the most common patterns you’ll encounter in dictionary entries for adjectives.

A large group of adjectives simply lists the three nominative singular forms. The order of the nominative singular forms that dictionaries use is: masculine nominative singular, feminine nominative singular, and neuter nominative singular. For example, the vocabulary list for this unit includes this adjective entry:

magnus, magna, magnum: “large”

First- and second-declension (or 2-1-2) adjectives

As with nouns, we group adjectives using the same patterns of endings into declensions, and as with nouns, we can determine the declension by looking at the dictionary entry. The endings for the three nominative singular forms magnus, magna, magnum should look familiar to you. Adjectives that follow this pattern use the same endings for the masculine forms as for second-declension nouns; the endings for the feminine forms are the same as for first-declension nouns; and the neuter forms use the forms of second-declension neuter nouns. This declension is therefore called the first and second adjective declension, since it uses the same endings as nouns of the first and second declensions, or the 2-1-2 adjective declension since for the dictionary order of masculine-feminine-neuter, it uses 2nd declension / 1st declension / 2nd declension endings, respectively.

Let’s apply your knowledge of noun endings to analyze these examples of noun phrases in the nominative plural:

magna corpora
magnae insulae
magni canes
magnae canes

In the first example , the noun corpora is neuter nominative plural, so we use the masculine nominative plural ending -a for the adjective. The next example uses the feminine noun insulae, so we use the feminine nominative plural ending -ae. The third and fourth examples uses the nonminative plural noun canes, which by itself could be either masculine or feminine. In these examples, there is no ambiguity, however: magni uses the the masculine nominative plural ending, so the phrase magni canes must be masculine; similarly, magnae canes must be feminine.

As the latter two examples clearly show, the agreement of noun and adjective does not mean that the case endings of the noun and verb will be the same! Adjectives of any declension pattern can describe nouns of any declension. Let’s use the same 2-1-2 adjective to describe the genitive singular of the third declension noun corporis (“body”). Since the noun corpus is neuter, we’ll need to use the neuter genitive singular ending for the adjective. Check the agreement of this noun phrase:

magni corporis

corporis has the correct genitive singular ending for a neuter noun of the third declension; the ending -i is the neuter genitive singular for second declension nouns and adjectives so the adjective form magni agrees.

Third-declension adjectives with one ending

Some dictionary entries for adjectives look similar to the dictionary entry for a noun: they have a nominative singular and feminine singlar form. In contrast to a noun entry, however, they have no single gender, since adjectives can modify nouns of any gender. Here is an example

ingens, ingentis: “enormous, huge”

Adjectives like ingens will use the same endings for the nominative singular of all three genders, so you can use the first item in the entry to describe a nominative singular noun of any gender: ingens liber, ingens insula, ingens corpus. The second item is the genitive singular form for all three genders.

As with nouns, to find the stem for adding other endings, you drop the ending of the genitive singular. In this group of adjectives, the ending is -is, and as you might already have guessed, that is telling us to use endings you’ve already learned for the third declension. Let’s form the nominative plural of the nouns in the previous example.

First, we find the stem by dropping the -is ending.

ingentis -> ingent-

We will now add third declension endings to the adjective forms.

The nominative plural of the second-declension noun liber is liberi; it is masculine, so we will add the third-declension ending for masculine nominative plural to form our adjective:

ingent- + es -> ingentes liberi

The nominative plural of the first-declension noun insula is insulae; it is feminine, so we will add the third-declension ending for feminine nominative plural to form our adjective. Remember that both masculine and feminine nouns of the third declension use -es for their nominative plural ending.

ingent- + es -> ingentes insulae

The nominative plural of the third-declension noun corpus is corpora; it is neuter. Neuter adjectives have endings similar to i-stem nouns. The adjective ending for neuter nominative plural will therefore be -ia, like maria, the nominative plural of the neuter i-stem noun mare, maris.

ingent- + ia -> ingentia corpora

Third-declension adjectives with two endings

Another group of adjectives that use third-declension endings will list two nominative forms: the nominative singular for either masculine or feminine, and the nominative singular for neuter. Here is an example:

horribilis, horribile: “terrible, fearful”

You can easily distinguish these two kinds of dictionary entry for third declension nouns. When the second form ends in -is (like ingens, ingentis), it is a genitive singular form for all three genders; when the second form ends in -e, it is a neuter nominative singular. Adjectives like horribilis, horribile use the same endings for masculine and feminine forms, but a distinct set of endings for the neuter. Compare these nominative singular forms:

liber horribilis
insula horribilis
corpus horribiles

To find the stem for adding further endings, drop the nominative singular ending of the dictionary form. Take your pick and drop -is from the masculine/feminine form, or drop the -e from the neuter form: you’ll wind up with the same stem. Here is the formation of the nominative plural forms for the same three nouns.

Find the stem:

horribilis -> horribil-

Then apply the appropriate ending. Masculine and feminine forms will use the same ending:

horribil- + es -> horribiles liberi

horribil- + es -> horribiles insulae

For neuter nouns, add the distinctive neuter ending:

horribil- + ia -> horribilia corpora

A note on English adjectives: Because English does not have endings for gender and case of nouns and even uses the same form of adjectives for both singular and plural, English lacks explicit rules about noun-adjective agreement. The adjective does not change form between one green shoe and two green shoes, an old woman or a group of old men. But note that English has interesting “ingrained” rules about the order of adjectives when there is more than one. Most native speakers of English know these rules as just what “sounds right” or “sounds wrong.” “Old green shoes” obeys these rules while “green old shoes” does not. See more in the discussion this blog post for language rules English speakers know but don’t know we know.

English language learners are sometimes asked to learn these rules about adjective order explicitly. That is a good reminder of the way in which language rules are sometimes defined for non-native-speakers (and we are all non-native speakers of Latin!) in a way that complicates the sense of a language meant to communicate.