Information about Agglutinative Language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view. It was derived from the Latin verb agglutinare, which means "to glue together."[1]
An agglutinative language is a form of synthetic language where each affix typically represents one unit of meaning (such as "diminutive," "past tense," "plural," etc.), and bound morphemes are expressed by affixes (and not by internal changes of the root of the word, or changes in stress or tone). Additionally, and most importantly, in an agglutinative language affixes do not become fused with others, and do not change form conditioned by others.
Synthetic languages that are not agglutinative are called fusional languages; they sometimes combine affixes by "squeezing" them together, often changing them drastically in the process, and joining several meanings in one affix (for example, in the Spanish word comí (I ate), the suffix -í carries the meanings of indicative mood, active voice, past tense, first person singular subject and perfect aspect).
Agglutinative is sometimes used as a synonym for synthetic, although it technically is not. When used in this way, the word embraces fusional languages and inflected languages in general. The distinction between an agglutinative and a fusional language is often not sharp. Rather, one should think of these as two ends of a continuum, with various languages falling more toward one end or the other. In fact, a synthetic language may present agglutinative features in its open lexicon but not in its case system: for example, German, Dutch.
Agglutinative languages tend to have a high rate of affixes/morphemes per word, and to be very regular. For example, Japanese has only two irregular verbs (and not very irregular), Nahuatl only two and Turkish has only one. Georgian is an exception; not only is it highly agglutinative (there can be simultaneously up to 8 morphemes per word), but there are also significant number of irregular verbs, varying in degrees of irregularity.
Examples of agglutinative languages
Examples of agglutinative languages are the Altaic languages (see Turkish), many Tibeto-Burman languages, Basque, the Dravidian languages, many Uralic languages (the largest are Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian), Inuktitut, the Bantu languages (see Luganda), Indonesian & Malay, the Northeast, Northwest and South Caucasian languages, and some Mesoamerican and native North American languages including Nahuatl, Huastec, and Salish. In the past, much of the ancient Near East also spoke such languages, such as Sumerian, Elamite, Hurrian, Urartian, Hattic, Gutian, Lullubi, and Kassite.Agglutination is a typological feature and does not imply a linguistic relation, but there are some families of agglutinative languages. For example, the Proto-Uralic language, the ancestor of Uralic languages, was agglutinative, and most descended languages inherit this feature. But since agglutination can arise in languages that previously had a non-agglutinative typology and it can be lost in languages that previously were agglutinative, agglutination as a typological trait cannot be used as evidence of genetic relationship to other agglutinative languages.
Many separate languages developed this property through convergent evolution. There seems to exist a preferred evolutionary direction from agglutinative synthetic languages to fusional synthetic languages, and then to non-synthetic languages, which in their turn evolve again into agglutinative synthetic languages.
Some fictional and constructed languages, such as Esperanto, Klingon, Black Speech, D'ni, and Newspeak, are presented as agglutinative.
See also
References
Linguistic Typology is an international peer-reviewed journal in the field of linguistic typology, founded in 1997. It is published by Mouton de Gruyter on behalf of the Association for Linguistic Typology. Its editor-in-chief is Prof. Frans Plank (University of Konstanz).
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Morphological typology is a way of classifying the languages of the world (see linguistic typology) that groups languages according to their common morphological structures.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
This article or section may be confusing or unclear for some readers.
Please [improve the article] or discuss this issue on the talk page. This article has been tagged since April 2007.
..... Click the link for more information.
Please [improve the article] or discuss this issue on the talk page. This article has been tagged since April 2007.
..... Click the link for more information.
A synthetic language, in linguistic typology, is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio. This linguistic classification is largely independent of morpheme-usage classifications (such as fusional, agglutinative, etc.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
fusional language (also called inflecting language) is a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to "squish together" many morphemes in a way which can be difficult to segment.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes.
..... Click the link for more information.
Definition
The degree of synthesis refers to the morpheme-to-word ratio. Languages with more than one morpheme per word are synthetic...... Click the link for more information.
An oligosynthetic language (from the Greek ὀλίγος, meaning "few" or "little") is any language using very few morphemes, perhaps only a few hundred, which combine synthetically to form statements.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs and those of intransitive verbs. The distinction can be made morphologically (through grammatical case or verbal agreement), syntactically (through word
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
A nominative-accusative language (or simply accusative language) is one that marks the direct object of transitive verbs distinguishing them from the subject of both transitive and intransitive verbs.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
An ergative-absolutive language (or simply ergative) is one that treats the agent of transitive verbs distinctly from the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs.
..... Click the link for more information.
Ergative vs.
..... Click the link for more information.
Austronesian alignment, commonly known as the Philippine- or Austronesian-type voice system, is a typologically unusual morphosyntactic alignment that combines features of ergative and accusative languages.
..... Click the link for more information.
An active-stative language, or active language for short, is one in which the sole argument of an intransitive verb is sometimes marked in the same way as the agent of a transitive verb (that is, like a subject in English), and sometimes in the same way as the direct object
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
A tripartite language, also called an ergative-accusative language, is one that treats the subject of an intransitive verb, the subject of a transitive verb, and the object of a transitive verb each in different ways.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
A direct-inverse language is a language where clauses with transitive verbs can be expressed either using a direct or an inverse construction. The direct construction is used when the subject of the transitive clause outranks the object in saliency or animacy but the
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
The syntactic pivot is the verb argument around which sentences "revolve", in a given language. This usually means the following:
..... Click the link for more information.
- If the verb has more than zero arguments, then one argument is the syntactic pivot.
..... Click the link for more information.
theta role or θ-role is the formal device for representing syntactic argument structure (the number and type of noun phrases) required syntactically by a particular verb. For example, the verb put requires three arguments (i.e., it is ditransitive).
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
In linguistic typology, word order is the order in which words appear in sentences. In many languages, changes in word order occur due to topicalization or in questions.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
In linguistics, a VO language is a language in which the verb typically comes before the object (thus including SVO, VOS and VSO languages). It was W.P. Lehmann who first proposed to reduce the six possible permutations of word order to just two main ones, VO and OV, in
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
In linguistic typology, subject-verb-object (SVO), is a sentence structure where the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third. Languages may be classified according to the dominant sequence of these elements.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Verb Subject Object (VSO) is a term in linguistic typology. It represents one type of languages when classifying languages according to the sequence of these constituents in neutral expressions: Ate Sam oranges.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
In linguistic typology, Verb Object Subject or Verb Object Agent - commonly used in its abbreviated form VOS or VOA - represents the language-classification type in which the following sequence of the three constituents, in neutral expressions, is
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
In linguistics, an OV language is a language in which the object comes before the verb. They are primarily left-branching, or head-final, i.e. heads are often found at the end of their phrases, with a resulting tendency to have the adjectives before nouns, to place
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear or usually appear in that order. If English were SOV, then "Sam oranges ate" would be an ordinary sentence.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Object Subject Verb (OSV) or Object Agent Verb (OAV) is one of the permutations of expression used in Linguistic typology. OSV or OAV denotes the sequence "Object Subject Verb" in neutral expressions: Oranges Sam ate.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Object Verb Subject (OVS) or Object Verb Agent (OVA) is one of the permutations of expression used in linguistic typology. OVS denotes the sequence 'Object Verb Subject' in unmarked expressions: Oranges ate Sam, Thorns have roses.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Time Manner Place (TMP) describes one possible ordering of adpositional phrases in sentences.
Linguistic typology has observed that TMP order is common among Subject Object Verb (SOV) languages.
..... Click the link for more information.
- Example: ... yesterday, by car, to the store.
Linguistic typology has observed that TMP order is common among Subject Object Verb (SOV) languages.
..... Click the link for more information.
Place Manner Time is a term used in linguistic typology to state the general order of adpositional phrases in a language's sentences: "to the store by car yesterday". It would seem that it is common among SVO languages. English, French, and Spanish belong to this category.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
See Language (journal) for the linguistics journal.
A language is a system of symbols and the rules used to manipulate them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon.
..... Click the link for more information.
agglutination is the morphological process of adding affixes to the base of a word. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative languages. These languages are often contrasted with fusional languages and isolating languages.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetical value. Typically a word will consist of a root or stem and zero or more affixes.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.
Herod_Archelaus
