Agglutination (linguistics)
Agglutination (from Latin agglutinare = to glue, to attach) is the attachment of a sound or a short chain of sounds to a word. The element added to the word (front or back) can be, for example, an article or a preposition or a phonetic part of it. In addition, agglutination can occur between a word stem and a word formation element . The opposite term is deglutination .
Agglutination between (previously) independent words is rather rare and occurs above all in languages in which larynx clicks are missing, so that the word boundaries cannot be clearly heard (e.g. French, English).
The agglutination between stem and affixes is a normal pattern of word formation in the agglutinating languages (e.g. Turkish, Finnish).
Examples
- English and French
Examples of the agglutination between article and noun :
- early gl. an eke-name (literally 'a name too')> engl. a n ickname , a nickname '
- early gl. to ewt > engl. a n ewt 'a water newt'
- afranz. l'ierre 'the ivy'> French l ierre 'ivy'
Through agglutination, one sound has passed from the article to the noun.
- Spanish
In Spanish , nouns of Arabic origin often consist of the Arabic noun with an agglutinated Arabic article:
- span. algodón 'cotton' <arab. al-quṭn
- Spanish azúcar 'sugar' <arab. as-sukkar (for the phonetic form of the Arabic article see sun letter )
- span. aceite 'oil' <arab. az-zait
The Spanish expression el algodón 'the cotton' thus contains the Spanish article el in front and, in addition - hidden in the noun - the Arabic article al .
Deglutination
Deglutination is the "wrong" separation of a sound. Mostly it is about the replacement of an initial sound as a result of an unclear border between article and noun.
Example:
- East Central German a nōter 'a snake ' (15th century)> High German an otter (16th century)
- Old French la lonce 'the lynx'> French. l'once 'the snow leopard'
literature
- Ernst Leisi , Christian Mair : Today's English. Traits and problems. 8th edition. Winter, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8253-0598-8 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Duden online: Agglutination
- ↑ Duden online: deglutination