Agglutinativity

Agglutinativity is a linguistic concept describing a type of language where words are formed by stringing together morphemes, with each morpheme typically representing a single grammatical or lexical meaning. This contrasts with isolating languages, where words are often single morphemes, and fusional languages, where single morphemes can carry multiple grammatical meanings. In agglutinative languages, the morphemes maintain their individual forms and meanings, and are generally easily separable.

A common characteristic of agglutinative languages is the presence of a long string of suffixes or prefixes attached to a root word. 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 affix adds a distinct layer of meaning without significantly altering the root or the other affixes. This makes the grammatical structure of agglutinative languages often quite transparent and regular.

Many languages exhibit varying degrees of agglutinativity. Languages widely recognized as highly agglutinative include Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian, Turkish, and many Turkic, Uralic, and indigenous American languages. While a language may be predominantly agglutinative, it can also display some features of other typological categories. The classification of a language as agglutinative is based on the dominant pattern of word formation.