Agreement
In some languages, adjectives alter their form to reflect the gender, case and number of the noun that they describe. This is called agreement or concord. Usually it takes the form of inflections at the end of the word, as in Latin:
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puella bona (good girl, feminine) puellam bonam (good girl, feminine accusative/object case) puer bonus (good boy, masculine) pueri boni (good boys, masculine plural)
In the Celtic languages, however, initial consonant lenition marks the adjective with a feminine noun, as in Irish:
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buachaill maith (good boy, masculine) girseach mhaith (good girl, feminine)
Often a distinction is made here between attributive and predicative usage. Whereas English is an example of a language in which adjectives never agree and French of a language in which they always agree, in German they agree only when used attributively, and in Hungarian only when used predicatively.
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The good (Ø) boys. The boys are good (Ø). Les bons garçons. Les garçons sont bons. Die braven Jungen. Die Jungen sind brav (Ø). A jó (Ø) fiúk. A fiúk jók.
Read more about this topic: Adjective
Famous quotes containing the word agreement:
“No one can doubt, that the convention for the distinction of property, and for the stability of possession, is of all circumstances the most necessary to the establishment of human society, and that after the agreement for the fixing and observing of this rule, there remains little or nothing to be done towards settling a perfect harmony and concord.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“A marriage based on full confidence, based on complete and unqualified frankness on both sides; they are not keeping anything back; there’s no deception underneath it all. If I might so put it, it’s an agreement for the mutual forgiveness of sin.”
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)
“There’s nothing is this world more instinctively abhorrent to me than finding myself in agreement with my fellow-humans.”
—Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990)