singular or plural???
Can someone tell me which of these 2 sentence parts and why: "de los siguientes fragmentos musicales" OR "de los siguiente fragmentos musicales". Is the singular "siguiente" or the plural "siguientes" grammatically correct and why. Thanx, kithara
4 Answers
It's de los siguientes fragmentos musicales, because adjectives agree in number with the nouns they modify.
Edit
In response to your comment
So "siguientes" is an adjective modifing another adjective and not an adverb, which would not be pluralized, modifying an adjective?
No, siguientes is an adjective modifying a noun. In big red houses, both big and red modify houses. In siguientes fragmentos musicales, both siguientes and musicales modify fragmentos.
I don't believe that siguiente can be an adverb. If you look it up here on SpanishDict, you'll find that it's an adjective or a noun.
Now that you have gotten helpful answers to both of your questions here, will you please complete your profile?
So "siguientes" is an adjective modifing another adjective and not an adverb, which would not be pluralized, modifying an adjective?
I don't think an adjective can ever modify another adjective in either English or Spanish.
As others have said here, when there are multiple adjectives, they all all modifying a noun, they are not modifying adjectives.
Speaking about English, Wiki states: An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, noun phrase, clause, or sentence.
The same might be true about Spanish but I don't know enough about Spanish to know.
The only potentially confusing thing is that in both languages, there are some words which have gained common usage and are listed in the dictionary as both adverbs and adjectives.
He is a fast runner. fast as an adjective
He runs fast. fast as an adverb
He is a rapid runner. rapid as an adjective
He runs rapid. (not allowed, rapid can not be used as an adjective)
He runs rapidly. rapidly is the adverbial form of rapid
He runs fastly (not allowed, there is no such word as fastly)
Interestingly, according to an online dictionary I just consulted, fastly used to be a word but it became obsolete in the 19th century as it was replaced by fast as an adverb.
Whenever the noun is plural the adjectives should be plural as well (concord).
Always! It's a basic rule.
Siguientes fragmentos musicales (plural).
Siguiente fragmento musical (singular).
El siguiente mes voy a ir a Miami.
La siguiente semana voy a ir a Nueva York.
Los siguientes libros son recomendables.
Las siguientes expresiones son maravillosas.
Siguiente is singular fem. and masc. and siguientes is plurar fem. and masc.
