Oct 28, 2015 - 06:53 PM
I'm pretty sure "weak inflection" refers to the ending of an adjective that comes between an article and a noun.
If you have an article, an adjective and a singular noun in the nominative or accusative cases, the adjective ends with -e. Take the article away and the adjective must take the mark of the gender (strong inflection). (Exceptions: Masculine accusative, where articles and adjectives always end in -en. Masculine nominative and neuter nominative/accusative ein/kein/mein type articles and posessives, where the adjectives take the mark of the gender.)
But plurals are different. When you have an article, adjective and plural noun, the adjective ends with -en. In the nominative and accusative cases, if you take the article away, that's when the adjective would end with -e.
Let's say your example was "The good student always has good tables". That would be "Der gute Student hat immer gute Tische".
But your example actually says "THE good tables." The adjective appears between an article and a plural noun, so we get "Der gute Student hat immer die guten Tische".
Notice "gute" between "Der" and a singular noun, but "guten" between "die" and a plural noun.
That's the best I can do to explain it. If anyone wants to correct or clarify what I've written, please do.