Adjectivemorphology

Adjectivemorphology is the subfield of linguistics that studies the morphology of adjectives across languages. It examines how adjectives are formed, how they inflect for grammatical features, and how they function within noun phrases and predicates. The field covers derivation, inflection, comparison, and cross-linguistic variation in adjectival systems.

Inflectional morphology marks features such as gender or noun class, number, and case where these are grammatical categories of adjectives. In languages with extensive agreement, adjectives take endings that mirror the noun. For example, Spanish adjectives agree with noun gender and number but rarely show case; Russian adjectives decline for gender, number, and case; Turkish adjectives are largely uninflected.

Derivation builds adjectives from other parts of speech or from existing adjectives. Common suffixes such as -ful, -less, -ive, and -y appear in many languages, while prefixes and compounding also yield adjectival forms. Some adjectives show internal stem changes (ablaut or umlaut) or irregular comparatives, as in good–better–best in English and gut–besser–am besten in German.

Degree and comparison form a central area, with synthetic endings or periphrastic constructions expressing more/most. Adjectives also vary in syntax: some languages place attributive adjectives before nouns, others after; predicative adjectives may align with verb morphology; agreement systems may extend to determiners and numerals within noun phrases.