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 which can be difficult to segment.
Examples of fusional
Indo-European languages are
Greek (classical and modern),
Latin,
Russian,
German,
Czech and
Polish. 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.
A good illustration of fusionality in language is the Latin word
bonus, "good" (masculine). The ending
-us denotes masculine gender,
nominative case, and singular number. Changing any one of these features requires replacement of the suffix
-us with a different one.
A feature that distinguishes fusional languages from agglutinating ones is the occurrence of irregular forms: this wouldn't happen in an agglutinating language since the synthetic elements retain a meaning of their own. Fusional languages are generally believed to have descended from agglutinating languages, though there is no linguistic evidence in the form of attested language changes to confirm this view. On the other hand, fusional languages generally tend to lose their inflection over the centuries—some languages much more quickly than others. For example,
Slovenian,
Lithuanian, and
Armenian are about as fusional as
Proto-Indo-European, but
modern English and
Afrikaans are nearly
analytic. The
Slavic languages have generally retained their inflection, along with
Greek.
Declension in fusional languages
Another typical feature of fusional languages is their systems of
declensions. In German, for instance, the definite and indefinite articles are declined according to the grammatical gender of the noun and which of the four grammatical cases it falls into; these being nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive. The definite article, for example is declined in the following fashion:
Adjectives are also declined according to the gender and number of the noun they describe, whether it is preceded by a definite article (weak declension), indefinite article (mixed declension) or no article (strong declension).
Examples:
Der Hamster (masculine noun, nominative case)
Des Hamsters (masculine noun, genitive case)
And adding the adjective
klein "little":
Ein kleiner Hamster "a little hamster" (mixed declension, nominative case)
Der kleine Hamster "the little hamster" (weak declension, nominative case)
Ich sah den kleinen Hamster "I saw the little hamster" (weak declension, accusative case)
Mit kleinem Hamster "with little hamster" (no article; strong declension, dative case).
English retains remnants of the
Germanic case system only with regard to personal pronouns (e.g. "you see
me" — accusative case) and with possessive case ("John's house") which is descended from the original genitive case.
See also
