Agglutinative tongue

An agglutinative language is one in which words are formed by joining independent monemes. Words in this type of language are made up of masses of lexemes and affixes, each with a well-defined referential or grammatical meaning. This term was created by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages taking into account their morphology. The word comes from the Latin verb agglutinare, which means "to glue one thing to another".

In agglutinative languages, the affixes must go in a certain place, according to the sense that you want to add or modify to the root. The affix must have a certain position with respect to other affixes and to the root itself, in order to be able to give the desired meaning to the word it composes. That is, a word can have two suffixes, but that does not mean that said word can be written with two different endings; both suffixes must be in a key position, depending on the meaning that you want to give to the word.

Agglutinating and fusing languages

There is no precise border between agglutinative languages and fusion languages. There are languages that are more clearly agglutinating than others, and in general the agglutinating language qualifier is reserved for languages that are very close to the agglutinating type because they present the following characteristics:

• Words are totally segmentable in morphomas that do not suffer alterations or assimilations by effect of adjacent morphisms.
• Each morpho performs a single grammatical category.

In contrast, in fusion languages, the affixes merge with each other and their form varies depending on the other morphemes. For example, in Spanish the negation form in- takes the form im- before labial, ir- before r- etc In addition, in these languages, many morphs usually carry out several morphemes at the same time, that is, the same morph represents values of different grammatical categories. Once again, Spanish can be taken as an example, where the ending -o in a present form simultaneously indicates that it is the first person singular, in the indicative mood, like the present tense.

Very agglutinative languages

Typically, in an agglutinative language, suffixes are added to a fixed root, normally monosyllabic, which modify or specify its meaning. Guarani, Japanese, Esperanto, Korean, Uralic languages, Turkish, Basque, Dravidian languages, Quechua languages, Aymara, Chibcha languages, Nahuatl and Swahili are examples of agglutinative languages spoken in the present. In the past, in much of Iran and the Middle East, agglutinative languages were spoken, such as Sumerian, Elamite, Urartean or Hurrian.

Examples

• In aimara, the form iskuylankañapkama "while (he/she) is in school" can be segmented in morphemes as follows iskuyla-n(a)-ka-ña-p(a)-kamaWhere

  iskuyla That's it. School

  -na It's an inessive that means in

  -ka oralizes the preceding theme iskuylan(a)

  -ña rated Packaging the above under the complex nominal construction "(the state of) be in school"

  -pa possessive of third person "your", which thus translates "(the state that he or she) is in school"

  -kama is a grouper/alcanzador morphema, which here translates by "until", "while"

• In Finnish, the form Taloissani "in my houses" can be segmented as follows: Such a "house" + i mark of plural + ssa brand of inesivo ("in") + and suffix that indicates the first person possessor of the singular ("my, my"); the form uidessani "while nado" is built on uida "nadar" and ssa and and as before.
• In Turkish, construction is very similar: from ev "house" is formed evler "(the) houses," evlerim "my houses," and evlerimde "in my houses." From "göz" = "ojo", you can form "gözler" = "(the) eyes", "gözlerim" = "my eyes" and "gözlerimde" = "in my eyes".
• In Basque, we can build, from a simple word as etxe "home", a wide range of cases: etxea "the house," etxeak "the houses," etxeko "of the house" etxera "to the house" etxerako "that goes home (lit. "from home"), etxetik "from the house," etxeraino "to the house"; when it comes to animated names, like gizon ("man"), we have gizona "the man," gizonaren "of the man," gizonarekin "with man," gizonarentzat "for man," gizonarengana "to man (in the direction of man)" gizonarenganako "that goes to man (lit. "of man"), gizonarengandik "from man," gizonarenganaino "to the man", for putting only a few examples.
• In Japanese, omoshirokunakatta "It wasn't interesting" (and also "It wasn't interesting" or "It wasn't interesting") is broken down omoshiro(i) "interesting" + kuna(i), indicating denial, + kattawhich indicates past time. This example teaches us the adjective character of Japanese adjectives.
• In Guaraní, starting from the root GuataThey come. Water: "(I) way", watertight: "I've already walked", watertane: "I will walk" Aguatamírõ: "if you walk", etc.
• In Esperanto, from the root Bov, words can be created and derived bov'or (toro), BovInnocent (vaca), fiBovo (both disgusting) Bovetor ("torito", diminutive), Bovejor (roof tracks) Bovaror (handle or set of bulls) Bovet'aroretc. Even through posters, complex structures can be created to create new words, which cannot be translated into most languages in the form of words. For example, the word figebovetarejo (fi-ge-Bov-et-ar-ej-o), in Spanish, "corral of herds and small and disgusting bulls".
• In Nahuatl, the language of the Mexica Empire, the name of the ancient city Teōtihuacān can be analyzed like this: teō(tl"gods" + - Hey. [statement]  teōti 'have divine nature' + -hua. [passive voice]  teōtihua 'to be made god, deify' + - cān 'place' م Teōtihuacān 'the place where gods were made', referring to the legend of how the sun and moon were created in that place.
• In inuktitut, the language of the Eskimos of Greenland, is strongly agglutinating: thus atuartariqalirpuq 'it started to have to study' can be segmented atuar 'study' + tariqa 'deber' + lir "start" + - Yeah. indicative + - Wow. transactivity marker + - Okay. 3rd person of the singular.

Reference and notes