Historical Linguistics

WRITEN EXERCISE: HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Issue: Agglutinating languages.

Terms definitions:

1. By Herbert Schendl glossary: A laguage in which words consist of morphemes which are formally neatly separable and each have a single meaning, such as Turkish and Japanese. See also inflecting language, isolating language.
2. By Mario Pei: A language combining into a single word variouslinguistics elements, each having a distinct, fixed connotation separate existence.
Agglutination: the formation of derivative compound words by putting together constituent elements each of which expresses a separate definitive meaning (Hungarian házakban “in houses”: ház-, “house; -ak-, sign of plural; -ban “in”).
3. By David Crystal in “A dictionary of Linguitics an Phonetics”: A type oflanguage established by comparative linguistics using structural (as opposed to diachronic) criteria, and focusing on the characteristics of the word: in agglutinative or agglutinating languages, words typically contain a linear sequence of morphs- as seen in English “dis/establishment”- and thus contrast with isolating and inflectional languages. As always in such classifications, the categoriesare not clear cut: different languages will display the characteristics of “agglutination” to a greater or lesser degree. Languages which display agglutination to a major extent include Turkish and Japanese.
4. By David Crystal in “An encyclopedia Dictionary of Language and Languages”: An agglutinative or agglutinating language is one in which words are built by stringing forms together,often into quite lengthy sequences. Turkish, Japanese and Swahili are of this type.

There are some characteristics worth of mention when one reads these different definitions of the same term. The first and more important from my point of view is the fact that “agglutinating language” does not have an “isolated” or “independent” definition. What I mean here is that in the four cases we find hecoincidence that the author recommends or advices to check also other terms in order to understand or assimilate what an agglutinating language is. In Shendl’s glossary is remarked “see also inflecting and isolating language” and in Crystal’s first definition there is also a reference to these two related terms. Going further, in the last definition provided by David Crystal, these three terms aredefined all together under a same entry in the dictionary which is “Typology of language”. Similarly, the definition of agglutination which I have included in Pei’s definition seems to be compulsory if one intends to recognize what an Agglutinating language is. So we can deduce from these aspects that the definition of “agglutinating language” is not complete at all without the knowledge of otherterms which are directly tied to it Lastly about the definitions of the term, I would like to talk about examples provided by the authors. Taking into account Crystal’s words “languages will display the characteristics of “agglutination” to a greater or lesser degree” Japanese and Turkish seems to be clear examples of this sort of languages since they are mentioned in the most of the definitions.To understand better the issue of “agglutinating languages”, we need to understand at the same time the issue of “isolating languages” which are related, and this one at the same time is directly related to the Language typology, so we will need to understand that clearly in order to understand our main issue in that eassy, the term agglutinating languages. We will go back to the origins ofthe classifications of the languages in the nineteenth century and, above all we’ll make some references to some ideas introduced by two important linguistics of this period: August Wilhelm Schlegel and Friedrich von Schlegel.

Even though there are references to the same thoughts before, the yunger of these two brothers is known as the person who used by first time the modern classification of...