The document discusses morphological typology in languages. It describes three main types of languages: agglutinative languages, where words contain a linear sequence of morphemes; fusional or inflectional languages, where morphemes fuse together and words are difficult to segment; and isolating languages, where words are invariable and syntax conveys meaning. Examples of each type are provided, such as Turkish, Latin, and Chinese respectively. The categories are not clear-cut, and languages can display traits of more than one type to varying degrees.

1. Morphological TypologyMorphological Typology
Thennarasu Sakkan

2. In the 19th century, a classification of languages based on
the morphological structure that they share has been
proposed.
According to this typology, languages can be agglutinative,
inflectional and isolating.

3. Agglutinative Language
In agglutinative or aggulutinating languages, words typically
contain a linear sequence (concatenation of morphemes) of
MORPHEME - as seen in English – dis/establish/ment.
Language with complex words in which each morpheme
corresponds with one semantic unit.
In agglutinating languages have a large number of inflectional
affixes easily separable and are attached to base like beads on
a string.

4. As always in such classification, the categories are not
clear-cut; different languages will display the
characteristic of ‘agglutination’ to a greater or lesser
degree.
Languages which display agglutination to a major extent
include Turkish, Finnish, Japanese and Dravidian.
Thus contrast with ISOLATING and INFLECTIONAL
languages.

5. Fusional language
In Fusional Languages, words typically contain more than one
MORPHEME, but there is no one-to-one correspondence between
these morphemes and meaning of the linear SEQUENCE OF
MORPS the word contains.
Languages such as Latin and Sanskrit represent this type, also
known as INFLECTING languages.
For example in Latin amicus (‘friend’), this form ‘fuses’ the
features masculine, NOMINATIVE and singular, in addition to
the ROOT, in a manner which makes the word extremely difficult
to segment morphologically.

6. Isolating language
In Isolating languages, all words are invariable (and SYNTACTIC
relationships are primarily shown by WORD ORDER.)
Isolating language that makes only minimal use of morphology.
Vietnames, Chinese and may South-East Asian languages are often
cited as good instances of isolating languages.
An alternative term is ANALYTIC, seen as opposed to SYNTHETIC
types of language (AGGULUTINATIVE AND INFLECTING), where
words contain more than one MORPHEME.

7. Isolating languages as exemplified by Chinese have no
inflectional morphemes, hence require little to no
morphology.

8. It comprises the subclasses of inflectional languages and
agglutinating languages. For the opposite, analytic language.
Synthetic Language
In Synthetic Languages, words typically contain more than
one MORPHEME (as opposed to ANALYTIC languages,
where words are typically monomorphemic.).
Polysynthetic Language
language that makes extensive use of word formation
processes for the construction of linguistic expressions.

9. The three models of morphology discussed above more or
less match languages with different morphological types
discussed above.
The Item-and-Arrangement approach fits very naturally
with agglutinative languages; while the Item-and-Process
and Word-and -Paradigm approaches usually address
inflectional languages.

10. Mental Lexicon the knowledge of the lexicon of a language as
represented in the individual minds of speakers
Morpheme the minimal meaning-bearing unit of a language
purist a language user who wants to avoid the borrowing of
linguistic expressions in his native language from other
languages

11. Concatenation of morphemes without any phonetic
changes, typical of agglutinating languages.

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Thanks!
ANY QUESTIONS?
Thanks!
ANY QUESTIONS?

13. Language Typology
Classification of languages based on grammatical characteristics, i.e. ignoring genetic or
geographical connections. The classical typology based on morphological criteria comes
from A.W.Von Schlegel’s distinction between analytic and synthetic languages: in analytic
languages ( also isolating language), such as Classical Chinese, the grammatical relations
between words in a sentence are expressed by independent syntactic form elements (e.g.
prepositions), while in synthetic languages they are expressed by dependent morphological
units (see Schlegel 1818). In the synthetic languages, Schlegel distinguishes between
agglutinating languages, in which grammatical and lexical morphemes with simple semantic
components are simply affixed to each other (e.g. Turkish), and inflectional languages,
whose words cannot be analyzed into single morphemes with simple semantic meaning and
which sometimes demonstrate phenomena such as oort or stem alternation (e.g. Sanskrit).
Humboldt (1836) added the term ‘polysynthetic languages,’ (polysynthesis) in which a word
often combines several word stems with very specific semantic meaning (e.g. Iroquoian)
(also incorporating language).

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