AGGLUTINATING

views updated

AGGLUTINATING, also agglutinative. A term in LINGUISTICS for a language whose words are mostly made up of units (morphemes) that are easily distinguishable, as in: Turkish evlerde (ev-ler-de, house-plural-in, ‘in the houses’); SWAHILI ninakupenda (ni-na-ku-penda, I-present-you-love, ‘I love you’). Most languages have some agglutination, as in English cows (cow-s), goodness (good-ness), distasteful (distaste-ful), but in some languages such as Turkish or Swahili, it predominates. See LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY.

More From encyclopedia.com