Adjektivstämme

Adjektivstämme, often translated as adjective stems, are the core part of an adjective that carries its basic meaning. When an adjective is declined, it changes its ending to agree with the noun it modifies in terms of gender, number, and case. The adjective stem remains constant throughout these changes. For example, in German, the adjective "gut" (good) has the stem "gut". When used with different nouns, it might appear as "guter", "gutes", "gute", "gutem", "guten", but the fundamental part "gut" does not change. Similarly, in English, while adjectives don't typically inflect for gender or case, the concept of a stem is still present. For instance, in "big", "bigger", and "biggest", "big" is the stem. Understanding adjective stems is crucial for grasping the morphology and grammatical structure of many languages, particularly those with rich inflectional systems. It helps learners identify the unchanging semantic core of an adjective and differentiate it from the grammatical suffixes that convey its relationship to other words in a sentence.