Fusional language

:"For fusion in word formation, see Compound (linguistics)".

A fusional language (also called inflecting language) is a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to "squish together" many morphemes in a way which can be difficult to segment.

The canonical examples of fusional languages are Latin, Russian, German or Polish; in general, all conservative Indo-European languages are fusional. Another notable group of fusional languages is the Semitic languages group. A high degree of fusion is also found in many Sami languages, such as Skolt Sami.

A good illustration of fusionality in language is the Latin word "bonus", "good" (masculine). The ending "-us" denotes masculine gender, nominative case, and singular number. Changing any of these features requires replacement of the suffix "-us" with something else.

A feature that distinguishes fusional languages from agglutinating ones is the occurrence of irregular forms: this wouldn't happen in an agglutinating language since the synthetic elements retain a meaning of their own. Fusional languages are generally believed to have descended from agglutinating languages, though there is no linguistic evidence in the form of attested language changes to confirm this view. On the other hand, fusional languages generally tend to lose their inflection over the centuries—some languages much more quickly than others [Deutscher, Guy (2005) [http://www.unfoldingoflanguage.com/ "The Unfolding of Language"] , William Heinemann, London.] . For example, Slovenian, Lithuanian, and Armenian are about as fusional as Proto-Indo-European, but modern English and Afrikaans are nearly analytic. The Slavic languages have generally retained their inflection.

Another typical feature of fusional languages is their systems of declensions. In German for instance the definite and indefinite articles are declined according to the grammatical gender of the noun and which of the four grammatical cases it falls into; these being nominative, accusative, genitive and dative. The definite article, for example is declined in the following fashion:

: Nominative: "der" (masculine) "die" (feminine) "das" (neuter) "die" (plural)

: Accusative case: "den" (masculine) "die" (feminine) "das" (neuter) "die" (plural)

: Genitive: "des" (masculine) "der" (feminine) "des" (neuter) "der" (plural)

: Dative case: "dem" (masculine) "der" (feminine) "dem" (neuter) "den" (plural)

Adjectives are also declined accordingly to the gender of the noun they describe, whether it is preceded by a definite article (weak declension), indefinite article (mixed declension) or no article (strong declension).

Examples:

: "Der Hamster" (masculine noun, nominative case): "Des Hamsters" (masculine noun, genitive case)

And adding the adjective "klein" "little":

: "Ein kleiner Hamster" "a little hamster" (mixed declension, nominative case): "Der kleine Hamster" "the little hamster" (weak declension, nominative case) :" Ich sah den kleinen Hamster" "I saw the little hamster" (weak declension, accusative case): "Mit kleinem Hamster" "with little hamster" (no article; strong declension, dative case).

English retains remnants of the Germanic case system only with regard to personal pronouns (e.g. "you see "me" — accusative case).

ee also

* Inflection
* Synthetic language

References