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 various linguistics 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 …ver más…

This typology was quite successful during the period and even thought its obvious lask of presion, current linguistics such as Bernard Comrie deem it as valid and it is undeniable that it constituted an important outbreak for the modern studies of the relation between the human actions and its interpretation in the language.

Regarding to August Wilhelm Schlegel an example of “Isolating language” would be the Chinese language. In this language, all words are roots but these roots are sterile and we can not combine them in any case. In the Chinese language there are no declinations, conjugations and derivative words so all the syntax consists on the alienation of a certain number of elements in the correct order. For Schlegel this sort of language must be a restriction for the representation of the human actions and its relations. About agglutinative languages, Schlegel’s information and analysis appear more ambigous and incomplete. He asserts, as we know in our days, that these are the kind of languages in which words are built up with the combination of roots and affixes and this system is more useful for expresing complex ideas and relations. As examples of agglutinating laguages Shlegel mentions American languages and Basque languages. Also the Arabic was included in this group because of certain aspects that the language presents, however