Agglutination (linguistics)

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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:

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Duden online: Agglutination
  2. Duden online: deglutination