ADJ: adjective
Definition
Adjectives are words that typically modify nouns and specify their properties or attributes. They may also function as predicates, as in
To auto je zelené. “The car is green.”
The ADJ tag is intended for ordinary adjectives only. See DET
for determiners and NUM for cardinal numerals.
In accord with the UD approach, adjectival ordinal numerals (první, sedmý, stopadesátý) are tagged as adjectives, although the traditional grammar classifies them as numerals. They behave like adjectives both morphologically and syntactically, with the exception that they cannot be compared and negated.
Most Czech adjectives inflect for cs-feat/Gender (velký – velká – velké) “big”, cs-feat/Number (velký – velcí), cs-feat/Case (velký – velkého – velkému – velkém – velkým), cs-feat/Degree (velký – větší – největší), and cs-feat/Polarity (velký – nevelký).
Examples
- velký “big”
- starý “old”
- zelený “green”
- nejneobhospodařovávatelnějšímu “to the most uncultivatable” (the longest Czech word)
- otcův, matčin “father’s, mother’s” (possessive adjectives)
- první, druhý, třetí “first, second, third”
- udělaný “done” (passive participial adjective, see below)
- scvrklý “shrivelled” (past participial adjective)
- dělající “doing” (present participial adjective, derived from present transgressive)
- udělavší “having done” (past participial adjective, derived from past transgressive)
Border cases
Passive participles lie on the border between verbs and adjectives.
Since release 2.0, both short and long forms are tagged ADJ, although
they may have verbal features in addition to the adjectival ones.
For example:
- Short: nesen, nesena, neseno, neseni, neseny “carried”
- Long: nesený, nesená, nesené, nesení, nesené “carried”
Their meaning is almost identical but the usage slightly varies. Both groups can be used in nominal predication with copula. Only the short forms can be used to form the passive voice (but it may be sometimes difficult to distinguish from copula constructions, see AUX). On the other hand, the long forms inflect for case and thus can modify nouns. (Occasionally even the short form may inflect for case but it is extremely rare in the modern language. Example: nesenu is the short form of feminine singular accusative. The corresponding long form is nesenou.)
There is an analogy with some adjectives that preserved so called nominal (short) forms. And these adjectives are not derived from verbs. Example:
- Short (nominal) forms: stár, stára, stáro “old”
- Default long (pronominal) forms: starý, stará, staré “old”
The nominal forms are used in predication, the standard forms both in predication and to modify nouns.
References
ADJ in other languages: [bej] [bg] [bm] [ca] [cs] [cy] [da] [el] [en] [es] [et] [eu] [fi] [fro] [fr] [ga] [grc] [hu] [hy] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [kpv] [ky] [myv] [no] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [uk] [u] [urj] [vi] [xcl] [yue] [zh]