A fusional language (also called inflecting language) is a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to overlay many morphemes in a way that can be difficult to segment.
Examples of fusional Indo-European languages are Sanskrit (and the modern Indo-Aryan languages), Greek (classical and modern), Latin, Lithuanian, Russian, German, Polish, Croatian, Serbian, Slovak and Czech. Another notable group of fusional languages is the Semitic languages group. A high degree of fusion is also found in many Sami languages, such as Skolt Sami.
An illustration of fusionality is the Latin word bonus "good". The ending -us denotes masculine gender, nominative case, and singular number. Changing any one of these features requires replacing the suffix -us with a different one. In the form bonum, the ending -um denotes either masculine accusative singular, neuter accusative singular or neuter nominative singular.
Read more about Fusional Language: History, Declension
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connexion with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)