Editing Agglutination (section)

==Examples of agglutinative languages==
{{main|Agglutinative language}}
Although agglutination is characteristic of certain language families, this does not mean that when several languages in a certain geographic area are all agglutinative they are necessarily related phylogenetically. In the past, this assumption led linguists to propose the so-called [[Ural–Altaic languages|Ural–Altaic language family]], which included the Uralic and Turkic languages, as well as Mongolian, Korean, and Japanese. Contemporary linguistics views this proposal as controversial,<ref>Bernard Comrie: "Introduction", p. 7 and 9 in Comrie (1990).<blockquote>For instance, the Turkic language family is a well-established language family, as is each of the Uralic, [[Mongolian language|Mongolian]] and Tungusic families. What is controversial, however, is whether or not these individual families are related as members of an even larger family. The possibility of an Altaic family, comprising Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic, is rather widely accepted, and some scholars would advocate increasing the size of this family by adding some or all of Uralic, Korean and Japanese.</blockquote>

<blockquote>For instance, the study of word order universals by Greenberg ("Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of meaningful Elements", in J. H. Greenberg (ed.): ''Universals of language'', MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1963, pp. 73–112) showed that if a language has verb-final word order (i.e. if 'the man saw the woman' is expressed literally as 'the man the woman saw'), then it is highly probable that it will also have postpositions rather than prepositions (i.e. 'in the house' will be expressed as 'the house in') and that it will have genitives before the noun (i.e. the pattern 'cat's house' rather than 'house of cat'). Thus, if we find two languages that happen to share the features: verb-final word order, postpositions, prenominal genitives, then the co-occurrence of these features is not evidence for genetic relatedness. Many earlier attempts at establishing wide-ranging genetic relationships suffer precisely from failure to take this property of typological patterns into account. Thus the fact that Turkic languages, Mongolian languages, Tungusic languages, Korean and Japanese share all of these features is not evidence for their genetic relatedness (although there may, of course, be other similarities, not connected with recurrent typological patterns, that do establish genetic relatedness).</blockquote></ref> and some refer to this as a [[language convergence]] instead.

Another consideration when evaluating the above proposal is that some languages that developed from agglutinative proto-languages lost their agglutinative features. For example, contemporary Estonian has shifted towards the fusional type.<ref>Lehečková (1983), p. 17:<blockquote>Flexivní typ je nejvýrazněji zastoupen v estonštině. Projevuje se kongruencí, nedostatkem posesivních sufixů, větší homonymií a synonymií a tolika alternacemi, že se dá mluvit o různých deklinacích. Koncovky jsou většinou fonologicky redukovány, takže ztrácejí slabičnou samostatnost.</blockquote></ref> (It has also lost other features typical of the Uralic families, such as [[vowel harmony]].)

===Eurasia and Oceania===
{{unreferenced section|date=October 2014}}
Examples of agglutinative languages include the [[Uralic languages]], such as [[Finnish language|Finnish]], [[Estonian language|Estonian]], and [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]]. These have highly agglutinated expressions in daily usage, and most words are bisyllabic or longer. Grammatical information expressed by [[adposition]]s in Western [[Indo-European language]]s is typically found in suffixes.

Hungarian uses extensive agglutination in almost every part of it. The suffixes follow each other in special order based on the role of the suffix, and many can be heaped, one upon the other, resulting in words conveying complex meanings in compacted forms. An example is ''fiaiéi,'' where the root "fi(ú)-" means "son", the subsequent four vowels are all separate suffixes, and the whole word means "[plural properties] belong to his/her sons". The nested possessive structure and expression of plurals are quite remarkable (note that Hungarian uses no genders).

Persian has some features of agglutination, making use of prefixes and suffixes attached to the stems of verbs and nouns. Persian is an SOV language, thus having a head-final phrase structure.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Mouche |first1=Ryan |last2=Renfro |first2=Ashley |last3=Lance |first3=Marshall |title=Persian Syntax |url=https://cedar.wwu.edu/scholwk/2019/2019_poster_presentations/57/ |journal=Scholars Week |date=May 15, 2019}}</ref> Persian utilizes a noun root + plural suffix + case suffix + postposition suffix syntax similar to Turkish. For example, the phrase "Mashinhayeshan-ra negah mikardam/ماشین‌های‌شان را نگاه می‌کردم" meaning 'I was looking at their cars' lit. '(at their cars) (look) (I was doing)'. 
Breaking down the first word:
 ماشین(car)+(ها(ی(plural suffix)+شان(possessive suffix)+را(post-positional suffix) 
We can see its agglutinative nature and the fact that Persian is able to affix a given number of dependent morphemes to a root morpheme (in this example, car).

Almost all [[Austronesian languages]], such as [[Malay language|Malay]], and most [[Philippine languages]], also belong to this category, thus enabling them to form new words from simple base forms. The Indonesian and Malay word ''mempertanggungjawabkan'' is formed by adding active-voice, causative and benefactive affixes to the compound verb ''tanggung jawab'', which means "to account for". In [[Tagalog language|Tagalog]] (and its standardised register, [[Filipino language|Filipino]]), ''nakakapágpabagabag'' ("that which is upsetting/disturbing") is formed from the root ''bagabag'' ("upsetting" or "disquieting").

In [[East Asia]], [[Korean language|Korean]] is an agglutinating language. Its uses of '[[Korean postpositions|조사]]', '[[Affix|접사]]', and '[[Suffix#Inflectional suffixes|어미]]' makes Korean agglutinate. They represent [[Grammatical tense|tense]], [[time]], [[number]], causality, and honorific forms.

[[Japanese language|Japanese]] is also an agglutinating language, like Korean, adding information such as [[negation (rhetoric)|negation]], passive [[voice]], past [[grammatical tense|tense]], [[honorific]] degree and causality in the verb form. Common examples would be {{nihongo3||働かせられたら|hatarakaseraretara}}, which combines causative, passive or potential, and conditional conjugations to arrive at two meanings depending on context "if (subject) had been made to work..." and "if (subject) could make (object) work", and {{nihongo3||食べたくなかった|tabetakunakatta}}, which combines desire, negation, and past tense conjugations to mean "I/he/she/they did not want to eat".

* {{nihongo3|"(subject) will eat (it)"||taberu}}
* {{nihongo3|"(subject) wants to eat (it)"||tabetai}}
* {{nihongo3|"(subject) doesn't want to eat (it)"||tabetakunai}}
* {{nihongo3|"(subject) didn't want to eat (it)"||tabetakunakatta}}

[[Turkish language|Turkish]], along with all other [[Turkic languages]], is another agglutinating language: as an extreme example, the expression {{lang|tr|Muvaffakiyetsizleştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine}} is pronounced as one word in Turkish, but it can be translated into English as "as if you were of those we would not be able to turn into a maker of unsuccessful ones". The "-siniz" refers to plural form of you with "-sin" being the singular form, the same way "-im" being "I" ("-im" means "my" not "I". The original editor must have mistaken it for "-yim". This second suffix is used as such "Oraya gideyim" meaning "May I go there" or "When I get there") and "-imiz" making it become "we". Similarly, this suffix means "our" and not "we".

[[Tamil language|Tamil]] is agglutinative. For example, in Tamil, the word "{{lang|ta|அதைப்பண்ணமுடியாதவர்களுக்காக}}" ({{transliteration|ta|ataippaṇṇamuṭiyātavarkaḷukkāka}}) means "for the sake of those who cannot do that", literally "that to do impossible he [plural marker] [dative marker] to become". Another example is verb conjugation. In all Dravidian languages, verbal markers are used to convey tense, person, and mood. For example, in Tamil, "{{lang|ta|சாப்பிடுகிறேன்}}" ({{transliteration|ta|cāppiṭukiṟēṉ}}, "I eat") is formed from the verb root {{lang|ta|சாப்பிடு-}} ({{transliteration|ta|cāppiṭu-}}, "to eat") + the present tense marker {{lang|ta|-கிற்-}} ({{transliteration|ta|-kiṟ-}}) + the first-person singular suffix {{lang|ta|-ஏன்}} ({{transliteration|ta|-ēṉ}}).

Agglutination is also a notable feature of [[Basque language|Basque]]. The conjugation of verbs, for example, is done by adding different prefixes or suffixes to the root of the verb: ''dakartzat'', which means "I bring them", is formed by ''da'' (indicates present tense), ''kar'' (root of the verb ''ekarri'' → bring), ''tza'' (indicates plural) and ''t'' (indicates subject, in this case, "I"). Another example would be the declension: ''Etxean'' = "In the house" where ''etxe'' = house.

===Americas===
[[File:Riksirishkakunapalla.png|thumb|383x383px|A sign in Spanish, English and [[Kichwa language|Kichwa]], an agglutinative language.]]
Agglutination is used very heavily in most [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native American]] [[language]]s, such as the [[Inuit languages]], [[Nahuatl]], [[Mapuche language|Mapudungun]], [[Quechua languages|Quechua]], [[Tz'utujil language|Tz'utujil]], [[Kaqchikel language|Kaqchikel]], [[Cha'palaachi]] and [[Kʼicheʼ language|Kʼicheʼ]], where one word can contain enough [[morpheme]]s to convey the meaning of what would be a complex [[Sentence (linguistics)|sentence]] in other languages. Conversely, [[Navajo language|Navajo]] contains affixes for some uses, but overlays them in such unpredictable and inseparable ways that it is often referred to as a fusional language.{{citation needed|date=October 2017}}