Slovene Grammar - Adjective

Adjective

The adjective expresses three main ideas: quality (qualitative adjectives, kakovostni pridevniki), relation (relational adjectives, vrstni pridevniki) and possession (possessive adjectives, svojilni pridevniki).

Adjectives in Slovenian can serve in three syntactical functions: left attributes (levi prilastek), predicate articles (povedkovo določilo) and predicate attributes (povedkov prilastek).

• Left attribute: Kakšno pričesko želiš? (What kind of haircut would you like?)

– Želim modno pričesko. (I would like a fashionable haircut.)

• Predicate article: Kakšna je pričeska? (What is the haircut like?)

– Pričeska je modna. (The haircut is fashionable.)

• Predicate attribute: Kakšna se je naredila pričeska? (What kind of haircut has been made?)

– Pričeska se je naredila lepa. (The haircut has been made beautiful.)

The majority of adjectives are of the first kind. These express any qualities and properties of personal and impersonal nouns. Such adjectives are gradable either in the two- or three-step comparison, depending if they are relative to another, opposite adjective (three-step) or not (two-step or three-step). (lep - grd (beautiful - ugly) vs bolan (ill)).

Relational adjectives express type, class or numerical sequence of a noun. For instance: kemijska in fizikalna sprememba (chemical and physical change), fotografski aparat (photographic device (=camera)).

Possessive pronouns define possession, ownership or belonging. For example: barvin sijaj (the colour's shine), Karmenina torbica (Karmen's handbag), delavska halja (workers' overall).

Some adjectives expressing properties next to masculine nouns imply definiteness ('relation') or indefiniteness ('quality') of nouns.
For an exactly defined noun or a specific type thereof:

• the adjective in nominative singular has the ending -ni or -i
• the question word is Kateri? (Which? (in German Welcher?))

For nouns which are not exactly defined, either being mentioned for the first time or generic:

• the adjective in nominative singular has the ending -en or - (no ending)
• the question word is Kakšen? (What sort of? (in German Was für ein?))

Adjectives ending in -i and all possessive pronouns do not have special indefinite forms. There are two special adjectives which have special definite and indefinite forms for all genders and all cases, namely majhen (small) and velik (big) (the definite forms are mali and veliki respectively).

Example:

• Stari učitelj je to dejal. (The old teacher said this.) – the implication here is that there is at least one other teacher who is not old
• Star učitelj je to dejal. (An old teacher said this.)

The adjective matches the subject or the predicate article to which it is ascribed. If it describes two singular nouns or one dual noun, the adjective should be in the dual. If it describes a plural or one singular and one non-singular noun, the adjective should be in the plural. Although gender should match the group, sometimes the gender of the adjacent noun is used with the appropriate grammatical number. For declension patterns of adjectives, see the section on nouns (the fourth declension is always adjectival). Some adjectives, however, are never declined, for example bež (beige), poceni (cheap), roza (pink), super (super), seksi (sexy), and some other loanwords.

• Mesto in vas sta bila proti predlogu občine. (The city and the village were against the suggestion of the municipality.)
• Mesto in vas sta bili proti predlogu občine. (the same, but somewhat unusual and seldom heard)
• Ti in tvoji sestri boste precej odšli! (You (masculine, since the verb is in masculine) and your two sisters shall leave forthwith.)

Possessive adjectives for masculine and neuter possessed nouns add -ov (or -ev if the possessive noun ends in c, č, ž, š and j ("preglas")) to the possessive noun. Feminine possessed nouns always take -in. Possessive nouns can include proper names, in which case they are written capitalised.

Negative adjectives are formed by prefixing the negative ne-, which is almost always a proper form, even though sometimes a Latin prefix is an alternative.

• lep -> nelep (beautiful, not beautiful (but not ugly (grd))
• reverzibilen -> nereverzibilen (reversible, irreversible)
• moralen -> nemoralen (moral, immoral) (note that 'amoral' in English has a different meaning)
• legitimen -> nelegitimen (legitimate, illegitimate)