ENGLISH WORDS 31

3.6.2
Get the glue (agglutinating languages)
In an ideal agglutinating language most words contain more than one morpheme and the morphemes
are realised by morphs arranged in rows like com on the cob. The morphs can be neatly picked off, one
by one. Swahili is a good example of an agglutinating language as you can see;
[3.16]

a. ni-ta-pik-a
I-future-cook-BVS
‘I will cook’
b. a-li-tu-pik-i-a
s/he-pase-us-cook-for-BVS
‘s/he cooked for us’
c. tu-li-wa-lim-ish-a
we-past-them-cultivate-cause-BVS
‘we made them cultivate’
Note: BVS = basic verbal suffix which is normally -a

In a Swahili word, it is normally possible to Say which morph represents which morpheme. Most
morphs only represent one morpheme at a time and do not FUSE with adjacent morphemes, as say,
plural marking does in leaves where it is partly signalled by the suffix -es /-Iz/ and partly by the change
of the /f/ of leaf to /v/. It is as if the word is contracted by gluing together separable, discrete morphs.

3.63
Labyrinthine words (synthetic languages)
In a SYNTI-IETIC LANGUAGE a word normally contains more than one morpheme. In this respect
synthetic languages resemble agglutinating languages. However, whereas in an agglutinating language
the morphemes and the morphs that realise them are arranged in a row one after the other, the morphs
of a synthetic language are to a considerable extent fused together and cannot be separated neatly one
from the other. Furthermore, the morphemes themselves are not arranged in a row. Rather, they are all
thrown together in a big pot like pot-pourri. It is impossible to separate the different strands.
Latin is a classic example of an inflecting language. Any attempt to segment Latin words into morphs
in such a way that each morph is associated uniquely with a particular morpheme very soon runs into
trouble. You can see this for yourself if you attempt to segment the various word-forms of the nouns m
nsa ‘table’ and fl s ‘flower’ into their constituent morphs and try to match those morphs with the
corresponding morphemes:

[3.17]
a. Case Singular b. Singular Plural
Nominative m nsa m nsae fl s fl r s
Accusative m nsam m nsas fl rem fl r s
Genitive m nsae m nsarum fl ris fl rum