Languages differ with respect to which kinds of morphemes, fulfilling which kinds of functions, can or cannot stand alone as independent words, how invariant morphemes are across words, and how they can be combined. We can classify languages into different morphological types according to these characteristics.

At one end of the cline we have what are called isolating or analytic languages. No human language is perfectly isolating – this would be a language in which all words are morphologically simple. Chinese languages like Mandarin and Cantonese are highly isolating, because in these languages grammatical information is typically expressed by function words rather than by affixes. However, there are nonetheless many compound words in the Chinese languages, so even Chinese is not 100% isolating. English is less isolating than Mandarin, but still very analytic. It has only a very small number of inflectional affixes and most pieces of grammatical information are expressed by means of function words like auxiliaries, modals and prepositions.

The opposite of analytic is synthetic. Synthetic languages have a lot of morphological complexity in words, and are often characterized by having very few free roots. Synthetic languages fall into different types. The main division is between agglutinating (or agglutinative) and fusional languages. In highly agglutinating languages, words are built from many easily separable affixes, each of which is associated with a consistent piece of meaning. For example, in the Harvaqtuurmiutut variety of Inuktitut, the word iglujjualiulauqtuq consists of five elements and expresses a meaning that would be translated into English with a full sentence: 

1. Inuktitut (example from Compton and Pittman 2010)
   iglu-jjua-liu-lauq-tuq
   house-big-make-distant.past-declarative
   ‘They (sg.) made a big house.’

Japanese is also an agglutinating language. In the following example, we can see that the verb has a string of suffixes expressing passive voice and causativity. The functions of these affixes are carried out by function words in English: the verb make, which, in combination with an infinitive, signals causativity, and the auxiliary was which, in combination with the past participle made, signals passive voice.

2. Japanese
   Watashi-wa natto-o tabe-sase-rare-ta
   I-TOPIC natto-ACC eat-CAUS-PASS-PAST
   ‘I was made to eat natto.’

By contrast, a fusional language is one where many pieces of grammatical information are combined into single affixes. The Romance languages are a good example of fusional languages: the suffix on a verb expresses tense, aspect, and subject agreement, and is difficult to break down into smaller affixes. The French suffix –iez, for instance, signals person (2nd), number (plural), mood (subjunctive) and voice (active). There is no element signaling, for instance, subjunctive, that we recognize again in other contexts – in the singular, for instance, the morpheme signaling 2nd person subjunctive active is spelled –es and not pronounced at all.

3. French
   1. Je veux que vous mang-iez du natto.
      I want that you.pl eat-2pl.sbj.act part natto
      ‘I want you to eat (some) natto.’
   2. Je veux que tu mang-es du natto.
      I want that you.sg eat-2sg.sbj.act part natto
      ‘I want you to eat (some) natto.’

In agglutinating languages, affixes are invariant, i.e. they have the same form wherever they occur, because they have not (yet) developed allomorphy as not enough time has passed for phonological assimilation to occur between morphemes. In the Japanese example above, deleting the affixes for passive and causative has no effect on the remaining affix(es) present, as shown in (4). Latin, by contrast, has different sets of personal endings used with different tense markers, as well as different stem allomorphs, as shown in (5).

4. Japanese
   1. Watashi-wa natto-o tabe-sase-rare-ta
      I-TOPIC natto-ACC eat-CAUS-PASS-PAST
      ‘I was made to eat natto.’
   2. Watashi-wa natto-o tabe-sase-ta
      I-TOPIC natto-ACC eat-CAUS-PAST
      ‘I made [you/someone] eat natto.’
   3. Watashi-wa natto-o tabe-ta
      I-TOPIC natto-ACC eat-PAST
      ‘I ate natto.’
5. Latin
   1. manduc-o
      eat-1SG
      ‘I eat’
   2. manduca-ba-m
      eat-PAST-1SG
      ‘I ate’

Figure 5.10.1 gives an overview of the different types of languages discussed. Note that these are ideal types – no natural language is 100% isolating or 100% fusional. All languages change all the time, and the status quo at any given point in time is the result of previous change. Sound change can lead to the loss of affixes as unstressed syllables become weaker in pronunciation, and the loss of affixes will make a language more analytic. At the same time, new affixes emerge out of previously independent words. We have already seen how independent words, i.e. free roots, can come to be so often used together with other words that they turn into bound morphemes. If an element is often used next to a content word that receives the stress, the element itself will tend to be unstressed and develop a reduced vowel, as is the case with the suffix –able as opposed to the adjective able, as we have already seen. A similar development is responsible for the so-called weak forms in English, i.e. unstressed versions of auxiliaries like have now used as affixes (as in I’ve, he’s etc.), or the negative particle -n’t. These bound morphemes don’t have vowels any more at all, because they are always used directly next to a stressed content word. (In American English, there is often no audible difference between can and can’t anymore, as even the final consonants have become reduced.) This has not yet happened to the suffix –like, which is relatively young, but English also has an adverb-forming suffix –ly, which is a reduced version of the same Old English word líce ’similar’ as the modern word like. The suffix –ly has simply had more time to change.

Figure 5.10.1: Language types

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CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0, Written by Elif Kara and Kirsten Middeke.