ABSTRACT
Adjectives are words which describe or qualify nouns, ‘big’, ‘small’, ‘old’ etc. ‘Predicative’ adjectives act as the complement of a verb, typically the verb ‘to be’, referring back to the noun they qualify. Czech adjectives habitually change their endings to match the gender, case and number of the nouns they refer to. This is called agreement. In English it is common for nouns to be used like adjectives to modify other nouns. In Czech adjectives derived from the nouns have to be used instead. Most Czech adjectives belong to one of two types, either ‘hard’ or ‘soft’, according to the vowels of their endings. Adjectives are conventionally cited by their masculine nominative singular form. Adjectives have a whole set of case forms in the singular and plural. Most of the case endings are different from those of nouns. Certain other adjectives also have a predicative ‘short form’, alongside their usual ‘long forms’.
