Language Types

Languages of the world can be classified into four major categories according to the arrangement or order of
morphemes .It is called the structural typology , and it is associated with Wilhelm Von Humboldt , a German linguist
of the late 18th and early 19th centuries .It is strictly a classification of the word structure of language .Thus , there
are three main types of languages based on this view .

1-Agglutinative ( Agglomerating ) : In this type of languages , words are formed by the free combination of affixial
morphemes which are added to the base morpheme without altering its structure .

Example: UNLOVELINESS. In this word, the affixes: un –li -ness are arranged to the base morpheme “love”
without affecting its structure. Turkish, Japanese, Swahili are said to be agglomerating.

2-Inflecting ( Fusional) : In this type of languages , the affixes are merged closely with the base morpheme so that
they become part of the word itself .

Example : English noun plurals like : ,en , mice, geese and women are inflectional in structure as against the
grammatically equivalent agglutinative forms : cars , houses, tables .etc.
Example: drink (present) drunk (past-part) drank (past)

Latin can be taken as a typical example of inflecting languages.

3-Isolating (Analytic) : An isolating language is defined as one in which all words are invariable , and
each ,morpheme represents a word .In English invariable words such as prepositions , adverbs and conjunctions are
isolating in type.

Example : at , to , on , too , very , and , or , but , from , now .

Chinese is cited as a well-known example of the isolating types.

4-Incorportaing (Ply synthetic): Eskimo and some American Indian languages have been so called as their word
forms are said to be very long and morphologically complex and to contain numerous bound morphemes the
translation of which would be represented by separable words in more familiar languages. This fourth class of
language types, however, is of little use in linguistic typology.

NO PURE TYPES:

The recognition of three types of language does not imply that any language will fall neatly into one
type .Features of agglutination and fusion are usually to be found in most languages , though in different proportion.
Some languages make use of one type of word formation to a predominant extent and are consequently classified as
isolating, agglutinative or fusional languages.

English is in fact a fairly mixed type in respect of the three types and each can be illustrated from English ,
though it is more analytic , having a large number of single-morpheme words.