Not many enthusiasts learn languages in terms of their theory. Usually everyone is interested in just talking to foreigners in their dialects instead of figuring out why verbs and adjectives behave in one way or another. Nevertheless, linguistics is extremely interesting and helps to answer questions like: "Is the English language inflective or agglutinative?" There is little practical benefit for the average person, although, having understood the theory, you can understand how languages “work” and continue to study them almost intuitively.
History of Linguistics
Ordinary people just communicate, not analyzing how they do it, and why certain established expressions are exactly what they are. Nevertheless, there are those who are interested in the rules by which different dialects are built. And those people who were interested in this long before our time, literally invented the science that we know today as linguistics. Now it’s hard to say who laid its roots, because today this discipline is divided into a huge number of branches. But as for modern linguistics, the American scientist Leonard Bloomfield can be called its founder. His active work took place at the beginning of the 20th century, and he managed to inspire his followers not only to develop theories, but also to put them into practice.
Around the same time, the current typology, which characterized languages as more or less developed on the basis of highly conventional features, was rejected. This problem was not paid attention until the middle of the 20th century, when a new classification was adopted based on the ideas of Friedrich Schlegel and Wilhelm von Humboldt. The morphological types of languages - amorphous, agglutinative, inflectional - were identified just by the latter. It is she with some additions and continues to be used now.
Types of Modern Languages
Modern linguistics uses the following classification:
1. According to grammatical signs :
2. According to morphological characteristics:
- insulating;
- agglutinative language;
- inflectional or fusional;
- incorporating.
These two categories should not be confused, although in fact almost all isolating languages coincide with analytic ones. Nevertheless, completely different factors are considered here. And the morphology in this case is much more interesting.
Agglutinative
This term is used not only in linguistics, but also, for example, in biology. If we turn to Latin, which is, so to speak, the “mother” of most of the terms, the literal translation will sound like “gluing”. The agglutinative type of language suggests that the formation of new vocabulary units occurs by attaching additional parts (affixes) to the base or root: suffixes, prefixes, etc. It is important that only one meaning corresponds to each formant, and in this case there are practically no exceptions in the rules of declination and conjugation. It is believed that this type is older and less developed than inflected. However, there is also confirmation of the opposite point of view, so that there is no reason to consider agglutinative languages more primitive.
Examples are quite diverse: Finno-Ugric and Turkic, Mongolian and Korean, Japanese, Georgian, Native American and some African, as well as most of the artificial dialects (Esperanto, Ido) belong to this group.
The phenomenon of agglutination can be considered by the example of the Kyrgyz language, in which there is a vocabulary unit that can be translated in Russian as "dostorum". "Dos" is the basis meaning "friend." The torus part refers to the plural. "Mind" carries a sign of belonging to the first person, that is, "mine." Finally, “a” denotes the dative case. The result is "my friends."
Inflectional
In this group, the formants involved in word formation can carry several grammatical features at once, inextricably linked. So, for example, happens in Russian.
In the word "green" there is an ending to -th, combining immediately the signs of the dative case, singular and masculine. Such formants are called inflections.
Traditionally, almost all stable Indo-European languages are attributed to this type of language: German, Russian, Latin, as well as Semitic and Sami groups. Researchers have noticed a tendency to lose flexion as speech develops. So, in the past, English also belonged to this group, and now it is, in fact, practically analytical, with few rudiments preserved. Another example of transformation can be called Armenian, which experienced the influence of Caucasian dialects and moved into the appropriate category. Now it is an agglutinative language.
Insulating
This type is characterized by the almost complete absence of morphemes. Word formation for the most part occurs with the use of service words, a rigid structure in sentences and even intonation.
A great example for this category is the classical Chinese language, in which concepts such as the declension of parts of speech and conjugation of verbs are completely absent. To indicate whether the action was in the past, or whether it will happen in the future, the circumstance of time and sometimes service words are used. Bundles are used to express membership, and special particles are used to compose questions. In this case, a correct understanding of the meaning of sentences is achieved due to the rigid word order. A similar situation is observed in Vietnamese, Khmer, Lao.
English is also very close to this type, having almost completely lost its signs of inflection.
Incorporating
This relatively new category, which is not part of the classical typology, has a lot in common with agglutinative. In fact, these two phenomena are of the same nature and often occur together. Nevertheless, linguistics distinguishes them, believing that if agglutination affects only the word, then incorporation can be observed in the whole sentence, that is, the unit can be expressed in a complex verbal-nominal complex.
Mixed
They do not distinguish this type separately, preferring to call certain dialects transitional forms, if they bear signs of inflectivity, and can be classified as an agglutinative language in some respects. These are Russian, Caucasian, Hamito-Semitic, Bantu, North American and some others. They are usually simply called synthetic, while indicating the degree of inflection.
Be that as it may, it is rather difficult to distinguish agglutinative, inflectional, isolating and incorporating languages in their pure form. One way or another, almost every example will carry the small features of the rest. This is due both to evolution and the close interaction of languages in the modern world of a large number of borrowings and tracing.
Language development
For several decades, researchers have been building theories about which types are considered more modern and perfect. However, there are no serious advances in this direction yet. The fact is that in the process of development, a language can change its typology, sometimes even several times. This was at some point the reason that the classification was disappointed for almost half a century.
Nevertheless, this topic in itself is very entertaining, and modern linguistics offers several related theories:
- Convergent evolution. It is assumed that each language develops according to its own rules, acquiring and losing various features by which it can be attributed to different types. In this case, analogies and coincidences with other dialects are most often random.
- Spiral evolution. It is believed that any agglutinative language eventually moves to inflectivity. Then it is gradually lost, transformation into an isolating type takes place. After that, the language again in one form or another returns to agglutination.