What is agglutinative language?

Not many enthusiasts learn languages from the point of view of their theory. Usually it's all interesting to just talk to foreigners in their dialects instead of figuring out why verbs and adjectives behave in one way or another. Nevertheless, linguistics is extremely interesting and helps to answer questions like: "Is the English language inflectional or agglutinative?" Practical benefits for the layman are not many in this, although, having understood the theory, one can understand how "languages" work and continue to study them almost intuitively.

History of linguistics

Ordinary people simply communicate without analyzing how they do it, and why some or other established expressions are exactly the way they are. Nevertheless, there are those who are interested in what rules different adverbs are built. And those people who were interested in this long before our time literally invented the science that we know today as linguistics. Now it is difficult to say who laid the roots, because today this discipline is divided into a huge number of branches. But as for modern linguistics, its founder can be arbitrarily called the American scientist Leonard Bloomfield. His active work came at the beginning of the 20th century, and he managed to inspire his followers not only to develop theories, but also to their practical application.

At about the same time, the typology that characterized languages as more or less developed on the basis of very conventional signs was rejected. This problem was not addressed until the middle of the twentieth century, when a new classification was adopted based on the ideas of Friedrich Schlegel and Wilhelm von Humboldt. Morphological types of languages - amorphous, agglutinative, inflectional - identified just the latter. It is with some additions that it continues to be used now.

Types of modern languages

Modern linguistics uses the following classification:

1. By grammatical features :

• analytical;
• synthetic.

2. By morphological features:

• insulating;
• Agglutinative language;
• Inflectional or fusional;
• Incorporation.

To confuse these two categories does not follow, although in fact almost all isolating languages coincide with analytical languages. Nevertheless, completely different factors are considered here. And the morphology in this case is much more interesting.

Agglutinative

This term is used not only in linguistics, but also, for example, in biology. If you turn to Latin, which is, so to speak, the "mother" of most terms, the literal translation will sound like "gluing". The agglutinative type of language assumes that the formation of new vocabulary units occurs by attaching additional parts (affixes) to the stem or root: suffixes, prefixes, etc. It is important that to each formant there corresponds only one value, and in this case there are practically no exceptions In the rules of declension and conjugation. There is an opinion that this type is older and less developed compared to inflective. However, there is confirmation of the reverse point of view, so that there is no reason to consider more agglutinative languages as more primitive.

Examples are quite diverse: Finno-Ugric and Turkic, Mongolian and Korean, Japanese, Georgian, Indian and some African, as well as most of the artificial dialects (Esperanto, Ido) belong to this group.

The phenomenon of agglutination can be considered by the example of the Kirghiz language, in which there is a dictionary unit, which can be translated in Russian as "dostrum". "Dos" is the foundation meaning "friend." The "torus" part denotes a plural. "Mind" carries the sign of belonging to the first person, that is, "my". Finally, "a" denotes the dative case. The result is "my friends."

Flective

In this group, the formants involved in word formation can carry several grammatical features, inextricably linked. So, for example, occurs in the Russian language.

In the word "green" there is an ending-to him, combining at once the signs of the dative case, the singular and the masculine gender. Such formants are called inflexions.

Traditionally, this type of language includes almost all stable Indo-European: German, Russian, Latin, and also Semitic and Saami groups. Researchers have noticed the tendency of loss of inflexions as the development of speech. So, in the past English also belonged to this group, and now it is, in fact, almost analytical with the preservation of a few rudiments. Another example of the transformation can be called Armenian, which experienced the influence of the Caucasian dialects and passed into the appropriate category. Now it is an agglutinative language.

Insulating

This type is characterized by a virtually complete absence of morphemes. Word formation mostly happens with the use of official words, rigid structure in sentences and even intonation.

An excellent example for this category is the classical Chinese language, in which concepts such as declination of parts of speech and conjugation of verbs are completely absent. To indicate whether the action was in the past, or it will happen in the future, the circumstance of time and sometimes the official words are used. For the expression of belonging, ligaments are used, and for the formulation of questions, special particles are used. At the same time, a correct understanding of the meaning of sentences is achieved due to the strict order of words. A similar situation is observed in Vietnamese, Khmer, Laotian.

Very close to this type and English, almost completely lost the signs of inflection.

Incorporating

This relatively new category, not included in the classical typology, has much in common with the agglutinative. In fact, these two phenomena are of one nature and often occur together. Nevertheless, linguistics distinguishes them, believing that if agglutination affects only the word, then incorporation can be observed in the whole sentence, that is, a unit can be expressed in a complex verbal-nominal complex.

Mixed

Separately, this type is not singled out, preferring to call these or other adverbs transitional forms, if they bear both signs of inflection, and can be classified as agglutinative language by some aspects. This is Russian, Caucasian, Hamito-Semitic, Bantu, North American and some others. They are usually simply called synthetic, indicating at the same time the degree of inflectivity.

Be that as it may, it is rather difficult to distinguish agglutinative, inflectional, isolating and incorporating languages in pure form. One way or another, almost every example will carry the small traits of the others. This is due both to evolution and to the close interaction of languages in the modern world of a large number of borrowings and tracing.

Development of languages

For several decades, researchers have been building theories about which types are considered more modern and perfect. However, no serious progress has been made in this direction. The fact is that in the process of development language can change typology, sometimes even several times. This was at some point the reason that the classification was disappointed for almost half a century.

Nevertheless, this topic itself is very entertaining, and modern linguistics offers several related theories:

• Convergent evolution. It is assumed that each language develops according to its own rules, acquiring and losing various features, by which it can be attributed to different types. In this case, analogies and coincidences with other adverbs are most often accidental.
• Spiral evolution. There is an opinion that any agglutinative language with time passes to the inflexibility. Then it is gradually lost, the transformation into an isolating type occurs. After that, the language again in one form or another returns to agglutination.