Agglutinatiivsust

Agglutinatiivsust is a linguistic term referring to a type of language structure where morphemes (units of meaning) are strung together in a linear fashion to form words. Each morpheme typically carries a single grammatical or lexical meaning, and these morphemes are generally distinct and easily separable. This contrasts with languages that are analytic, where words often consist of a single morpheme and grammatical relationships are shown through word order or separate function words, or fusional languages, where single morphemes can carry multiple meanings.

In agglutinative languages, a base root word can have multiple affixes attached to it, each adding a specific piece of information such as tense, number, case, or possession. For example, in Turkish, the word "evlerimde" (in my houses) can be broken down as follows: "ev" (house) + "-ler" (plural) + "-im" (my) + "-de" (in). Each part is clearly identifiable and contributes its own distinct meaning to the whole.

Many languages exhibit agglutinative characteristics, with prominent examples found in Turkic languages (like Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Kazakh), Uralic languages (like Finnish, Hungarian, and Estonian), and some indigenous languages of the Americas. The clear-cut nature of morphemes in agglutinative languages is often seen as a systematic and logical way of constructing complex words and conveying intricate grammatical information. This structure allows for a high degree of expressiveness and can lead to very long, complex words that encapsulate an entire sentence's worth of meaning.