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agglutinative language

A language in which the words are formed by joining morphemes together. The term is derived from the Latin verb agglutinare, which means "to glue together." An agglutinative language is a form of synthetic language in which each affix typically represents one unit of meaning (such as "diminutive," "past tense," "plural," etc.), and bound morphemes are expressed by affixes (and not by internal changes of the root of the word, or changes in stress or tone). In an agglutinative language, affixes do not become fused with others and do not change form conditioned by others. Synthetic languages which are not agglutinative are called "fusional" or "inflective" languages; they sometimes combine affixes by "squeezing" them together, often changing them drastically in the process and joining several meanings in one affix. The distinction between an agglutinative and a fusional language is often not sharp. Rather, one should think of these as two ends of a continuum, with various languages falling more toward one end or the other. Examples of agglutinative languages are the Altaic languages (see Turkish), Basque, Swahili, Zulu, Malay, and some Mesoamerican and native North American languages including Nahuatl, Huastec, and Salish. An example of an agglutinative constructed language is Klingon.(from Wikipedia)

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