agglutinativen

Agglutinative describes a type of morphological structure in which words are formed by stringing together a sequence of affixes, or morphemes, each usually expressing a single grammatical meaning. In agglutinative languages, the root or stem is extended by a chain of clear, separable morphemes, so the boundaries between morphemes are typically easy to identify. This stands in contrast to fusional languages, where a single affix can encode multiple grammatical categories and may involve stem changes, and to isolating languages, where words tend to consist of a single morpheme and grammatical relations are shown mainly by word order or separate words.

Commonly cited examples include Turkish, Finnish, and Hungarian, as well as Basque and Swahili. Turkish and Finnish use extensive post- or pre-affixation to mark case, number, tense, mood, and other grammatical categories. Hungarian employs a rich set of suffixes to indicate possessives, plurality, and various cases. Basque combines noun declensions with verbal agreement through affixes, while Swahili features noun class prefixes and concordant verbal endings. These languages typically allow long words formed by attaching numerous morphemes to a base.

Notes: agglutination is a typological category rather than a language family. Many languages show predominately agglutinative patterns but also include some fusional or irregular elements. In linguistics and natural language processing, agglutinative morphology often requires explicit morpheme segmentation and analysis, contributing to clear but potentially lengthy word forms.