Grammar: noun and adjective base forms

Nouns and adjectives have a number of base forms that you need to learn

Base forms

Today’s lesson is about explaining the reasoning behind having to learn the base forms of nouns and adjectives.

As you can guess by the name, base forms are at the bottom of the hierarchy: they are the foundation you need in order to use words correctly in every context.

Many languages require you to learn different base forms: the number and type of those are different, but rare is the language that is so regular that you can get away with learning just one form of the word.

Why this is important…

Since so many different forms are derived from the base forms, you won’t get far in your study of language if you don’t learn the base forms.

One way to think of this is that each base form unlocks new forms of words that you can build so that a speaker of the language understands you.

More excitingly, by knowing the relationships between base forms and derived forms, you can actually deduce the base form when you see a derived form.