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agglutinative

agglutinative

9.9
Making words by joining parts that each add one meaning
  • adjective
  • /əˈɡluːtɪnətɪv/
  • Specialized
translation icon : aglutinante
  • In Finnish, an agglutinative structure allows for the creation of complex words that convey detailed information within a single term.

Examples

  • I know my nation's history very well, and I know Armenian history very well too. In fact, part of Armenian stock, the Urartians were a non-Indo-European agglutinative-speaking people, the same as Hungarians. But in any case, please do not call us Turks, for we are not and never were...

    Blog text (24)
  • It's also an agglutinative language, which means it builds phrases by using suffixes and infixes instead of using prepositions and other 'helper' words, so the words get really long.

    Blog text (27)
  • During this period, Mesopotamian writing became intelligible; the language was Sumerian, an agglutinative language of unknown origin.

    Academic text (1993)
  • Thus Hocquard's cognitive mapping proceeds incrementally, with the addition of each successive element fueling the agglutinative dimension of literature.

    Academic text (2002)
  • Turkish is an agglutinative language, which means it forms words by adding prefixes and suffixes to express different grammatical meanings.

  • Japanese is considered an agglutinative language because it combines various suffixes to indicate tense, politeness, and grammatical functions.

Compounds

9.9

A language where words are made by joining small parts, each with its own meaning like Turkish or Japanese

How Agglutinative

polysynthetic
  • Specialized
9.9
synthetic
  • Specialized
7.2
agglutinative
  • Specialized
9.9
analytic
  • Specialized
6.8
isolating
  • Specialized
1 8.8

Surface Forms

agglutinative positive

Morphology

agglutinative = agglutinate (semi-transparent) = agglutinate + ive

Formed from 'agglutinate' + '-ive' but used as a technical linguistic term applying the 'stick together' metaphor to morpheme concatenation, which may not be obvious to general learners.

Etymology

Agglutinative also comes from the same Latin agglutinare 'to glue together', and a helpful image is beads on a string: an agglutinative language 'glues' small parts onto a word to add clear meanings, which is why language experts call Turkish and similar languages 'agglutinative'.