The inflectional ending of an attributive adjective depends on the gender of the noun it modifies; cf. also Section 23.2. If the noun is masculine or feminine, and therefore belongs to the de-group, the adjective usually ends in -e (pronounced as schwa /ə/), which means that the inflection is independent of the number and definiteness of the noun phrase. If the noun is neuter, and therefore belongs to the het-group, the -e ending is absent in indefinite singular noun phrases. This is illustrated in Table 1, in which the single case of null inflection is given in the box with bold lines.

	singular		plural
	de-nouns	het-nouns	de-nouns	het-nouns
definite	de oude stoel the old chair	het oude boek the old book	de oude stoelen the old chairs	de oude boeken the old books
indefinite	een oude stoel an old chair	een oud-∅ boek an old book	oude stoelen old chairs	oude boeken old books

The paradigm in Table 1 can be described by assuming the rules in (2), in which the features of the noun (phrase) are given in square brackets.

Alternatively, we could adopt the rules in (3). Although this set of rules may seem unnecessarily complex at first glance, we will use it as the point of departure for our discussion later in this chapter.

The reason for preferring the rules in (3) is that they are superior to the rules in (2) in that they straightforwardly account for the fact, illustrated in Table 2, that number is irrelevant in the case of non-count nouns: the attributive -e ending is missing in indefinite noun phrases headed by a neuter non-count noun. This would follow from (3), but not from (2) if we assume that the number feature is simply not present in non-count nouns; cf. Broekhuis (2007/2008: §4.2) for more discussion.

	de-noun	het-noun
definite	de lekkere rijst the tasty rice	het lekkere bier the tasty beer
indefinite	lekkere rijst tasty rice	lekker-∅ bier tasty beer

As shown in (4), a noun modified by more than one adjective induces the inflectional ending on each of the adjectives. The (a)-examples illustrate this for the non-neuter noun stoelchair, and the (b)-examples for the neuter noun boekbook.

We will refer to this phenomenon as the concord constraint on attributive inflection, which is formulated in (5).

The proviso in parentheses in (5) is necessary because the appearance of the -e ending is partly phonologically determined. As will become clear in Subsection II, this proviso will account for the apparent counterexamples in (6).

Observe that the concord constraint in (5) does not apply to the examples in (7), in which the adjectives should be considered compound forms.

The paradigm in Table 1 is characteristic for adjectives ending in a consonant (see the examples in the previous subsection), but if the adjective ends in a vowel, the -e ending can sometimes be omitted. This results in the pattern in (8). Short vowels are not mentioned here, because in Dutch they only occur in closed syllables (i.e. syllables ending in a consonant).

This section has shown that the distribution of the attributive –e ending is largely determined by the syntactic/semantic features of the modified noun, although certain phonological properties of the adjective may also play a role. It should be noted that the current system, according to which all attributive adjectives are inflected except those used in indefinite singular neuter noun phrases, may be under some pressure, as examples such as een mooie meisjeneuter are attested in the language of (immigrant) second-language learners. Although the system currently seems resistant to the spread of such forms, it is not inconceivable that this might happen at some point, which would lead to the abolition of the current inflectional system; cf. Bennis & Hinskens (2014). It is worth mentioning in this context that in Afrikaans, which is diachronically derived from Dutch, the inflectional system has also changed in that the properties of the modified noun no longer play a role and the distribution of the -e ending is mainly determined by the phonological properties of the adjective: the suffix -e is only found with polysyllabic, not monosyllabic adjectives (as well as in certain special contexts); cf. Kotzé (2016) and Kotzé & Breed (2020).