🗣️ 3. Adjectives, comparison and adverbs

An adjective agrees with the noun it qualifies in gender, number and case. Latin has two adjective classes: the adjectives of the first and second declension (bonus, bona, bonum) and those of the third declension (fortis, forte; fēlix). Both are declined like nouns of the corresponding classes, with a few characteristic differences. Comparison has three degrees, and most adverbs are made from adjectives.

Contents

1. Adjectives of the first and second declension
2. The nine pronominal adjectives
3. Adjectives of the third declension
4. Comparison
5. Adverbs
6. Use of adjectives
7. Position and word order
8. How Mova handles it

1. Adjectives of the first and second declension

The masculine is declined like dominus (or puer, ager), the feminine like rosa, the neuter like bellum (Bennett 1918 §§62–66).

Adjectives in -er are of two kinds, as the nouns are: miser, misera, miserum keeps the e (gen. miserī), and pulcher, pulchra, pulchrum drops it (gen. pulchrī). Līber "free" keeps the e in the oblique cases (līberī); noster, nostra, nostrum, with vester, drops it.

In the Vulgate these adjectives carry the weight of the translation of Hebrew and Greek: et erant valde bona, "and they were very good" (Gen 1:31, valde the adverb of section 5, bona neuter plural for the things made). Adjectives are used as nouns in Beati pauperes spiritu: quoniam ipsorum est regnum cælorum (Matt 5:3), "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (beati and pauperes are adjectives used as nouns).

2. The nine pronominal adjectives

Nine adjectives are declined like the first and second declension but have genitive singular in -īus and dative singular in -ī in all genders (Bennett 1918 §§66, 92):

ūnus "one", sōlus "alone", tōtus "whole", ūllus "any", nūllus "none", alius "another" (neuter aliud), alter "the other of two", uter "which of two", neuter "neither".

(alius has the genitive alīus, usually replaced by alterīus.) In the plural they are regular. Their pronoun-like inflection links them to the demonstratives and to quis, and in the Late and Medieval language these genitive forms were dropped as the case system simplified (chapter 15). Alter and alius are exact in classical prose: alter is one of two, alius one of many; the Vulgate and later Latin loosen the difference.

3. Adjectives of the third declension

Their declension follows the i-stems of the nouns: ablative singular in -ī, genitive plural in -ium, neuter plural in -ia (Bennett 1918 §§67–70). They are distinguished by how many forms the nominative singular has:

Fortis (two endings) and fēlix (one ending):

Some adjectives are consonant stems and follow the nouns of that class (Bennett 1918 §69): vetus, veteris (abl. vetere, gen. pl. veterum, neuter pl. vetera), pauper, dīves, particeps, inops, memor (abl. -ī/-e, gen. pl. -um). The participle in -ns has the ablative in -e when it is used as a verb, above all in the ablative absolute (regnante, chapter 11, and the dating clause of la_llct train-s1: regnante domno nostro Carulo rege), and in -ī when it is used as an adjective (Bennett 1918 §70, remark).

Omnis is the most frequent of this class: Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt (Caes. B. G. 1.1), "all of these differ among themselves in language, customs and laws."

4. Comparison

4.1 The degrees

There are three degrees (Bennett 1918 §§71–75). The comparative is formed by adding -ior (m./f.), -ius (n.) to the stem; the superlative by -issimus, -a, -um.

Adjectives in -er make the superlative in -errimus by adding the ending to the nominative (pulcher-rimus, miser-rimus); six adjectives in -ilis have -illimus. Adjectives in -eus, -ius, -uus are compared with the adverbs magis and maximē: idōneus, magis idōneus, maximē idōneus.

4.2 Irregular comparison

Several adjectives have no positive and are derived from prepositions (prior, ulterior, interior). The comparative has the neuter plural -a and the ablative singular -e (or -ī), the genitive plural -um: maiōrum "of the elders" (maiōribus, "in our ancestors' time": ita Helvetios a maioribus suis institutos esse, Caes. B. G. 1.14). The comparative of multus in the singular is a noun: plūs takes a genitive (plūs virium); in the plural it is an adjective (plūrēs, plūra).

4.3 Use of the degrees

• Comparative with quam or the ablative: quam "than" is followed by the same case as the thing compared (anima plus est quam esca, Matt 6:25); the ablative of comparison replaces it, when the first term is in the nominative or accusative (Majorem hac dilectionem nemo habet, John 15:13, "no one has a greater love than this", hac ablative of comparison; Bennett 1918 §217). The Vulgate also uses quam with the comparative to translate the Greek genitive: ecce plus quam Salomon hic (Matt 12:42).
• Absolute comparative and superlative: without a second term, the comparative means "rather, too" (senior "rather old, elderly") and the superlative "very": vir amplissumus, P. Scipio (Cic. Cat. 1.3), "the most distinguished man, P. Scipio" (or "a very distinguished man"); fortissimi sunt Belgae (Caes. B. G. 1.1), "the Belgae are the bravest of them all." UD calls this degree Abs, and the superlative proper Sup (UD 2.11 renamed the Latin Degree=Sup to Degree=Abs where it means "very").
• Superlative with quam: quam maximus, "as large as possible"; quam prīmum, "as soon as possible".
• Partitive genitive with the superlative: Horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae, "of all these the bravest are the Belgae" (Caes. B. G. 1.1).

5. Adverbs

Most adverbs are made from adjectives (Bennett 1918 §§76–77, 140):

The comparative adverb is the neuter accusative singular of the comparative adjective (altius, fortius); the superlative adverb ends in -ē (altissimē, fortissimē). Irregular: bene, melius, optimē; male, peius, pessimē; magnopere, magis, maximē; parum, minus, minimē; multum, plūs, plūrimum; diū, diūtius, diūtissimē; saepe, saepius, saepissimē.

Verg. Aen. 1.3–5 · Latin Library litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto / vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram; / multa quoque et bello passus … "… driven much, he, on land and sea, by the force of the gods, because of the mindful anger of savage Juno; much, too, he suffered in war …"

Multum in line 3 is a neuter accusative singular used as an adverb ("much"), whereas multa in line 5 is the neuter plural object of passus ("many things"). The two forms are the same word in a different construction; the first is not governed by anything.

Adverbs also derive from nouns and pronouns: hīc, ibi, ubi (place), tum, nunc, tunc (time), ita, sīc, ut (manner). They are particles, not inflected, and are treated with the prepositions in chapter 8.

6. Use of adjectives

• Agreement. In an attributive or predicative use the adjective agrees in gender, number and case with its noun (Bennett 1918 §§233–235). With two or more nouns the adjective usually agrees with the nearest one, or is plural; if the nouns are of different gender it is masculine for persons and neuter for things.
• Adjective as noun. Masculine plural for persons (boni, nostri "our men", multi), neuter plural for things (omnia, multa, cuncta), neuter singular for abstract ideas (bonum, verum, honestum) (Bennett 1918 §§236–238). Christian Latin makes extensive use of this: sancta sanctorum, "the holy of holies" (Heb 9:3), Rex regum et Dominus dominantium (Rev 19:16), "king of kings and lord of lords". The Hebrew superlative by repeating the noun in the genitive plural (canticum canticorum, "the song of songs", sancta sanctorum) is a Hebraism, treated in chapter 14.
• Adjective for adverb or preposition phrase. Prior, prīmus, ultimus and others are used for English adverbs and subordinate clauses: prīmus vēnit, "he came first" (Bennett 1918 §239).
• Partitive adjectives: medius, summus, īmus, extrēmus, reliquus qualify the part, not the whole: summus mons, "the top of the mountain", in medio urbis, "in the middle of the city" (Bennett 1918 §241).
• Predicate adjective after esse, and with verbs of seeming and being made.

7. Position and word order

An adjective may stand before or after its noun; the classical neutral order is noun–adjective for descriptive adjectives (vir bonus, res publica), and adjective–noun for adjectives of quantity, number and quality that are emphasised or that carry a judgement (multi hominēs, magnus numerus, summus mons). Demonstratives and possessives usually precede, with a high-frequency exception in formulae (pater noster). A treebank study of Latin and Ancient Greek (gulordava-2015-diachronic-trends-word-order-freedom; non-commercial, read for its findings, not copied) measured the direction of the adjective and the numeral relative to the noun over time, and found that the direction changed little over time except for the Latin adjective, while the adjacency of the modifier to its head became more fixed. The question is taken up in chapter 9.

8. How Mova handles it

The pipeline (2026-10-22). The adjective is an UPOS ADJ with Case, Gender, Number, Degree in the LLCT's FEATS. For the parser, en xpos-fill maps every ADJ to JJ (the Penn Treebank adjective tag), without the degree or the case, and the pronominal determiner (DET) to DT (or PRP$ for the possessive); the comparative and the superlative are not distinguished (the English tags JJR, JJS are not produced by this step). Agreement is therefore not given to the parser as a feature; it is learnt, if at all, from the word forms.

UD conventions. LLCT, ITTB, PROIEL, Perseus and UDante give noster, vester, meus, tuus, suus the UPOS DET with Poss=Yes, and iste, ille, hic, is, ipse DET or PRON by function, since UD 2.8 (PROIEL changelog: "Possessive ADJ changed to DET as in other Latin treebanks"). The superlative is Degree=Abs in all five from UD 2.11 on. The participles are the open question: some treebanks lemmatise a participle used as an adjective under its adjective lemma and some under the verb (passarotti-2025-harmonizing-divergent-lemmatization-part-speech), and the choice of ADJ or VERB for the same form differs from one treebank to another (cecchini-2021-formae-reformandae-reorganisation-verb-form); the choice affects the count of amod against acl.

Where it stops. No Latin lexicon: the degree of an adjective cannot be computed from its form, since melior needs the table of section 4.2. A word list of the irregular comparison above, with the five pronominal-adjective genitives, would be the smallest useful resource; neither it nor a morphological analyser exists in Mova yet.

Sources for this chapter. Bennett 1918 §§62–92, 140; Allen & Greenough 1903 and Gildersleeve & Lodge 1895 (paraphrased); examples: Caes. B. G. 1.1, 1.14; Cic. Cat. 1.3; Verg. Aen. 1.3–5 (Latin Library); Vulgate Gen 1:31, Matt 5:3, 6:25, 12:42, John 15:13, Heb 9:3, Rev 19:16 (Clementine); UD_Latin-LLCT.

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