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The Altaic Languages Are Agglutinative in Word Structure

The morphology of Altaic languages is agglutinative, where words are formed by adding suffixes to root words. This results in polysyllabic words made up of distinct morphemes, each with its own meaning or function. Altaic languages are highly inflected, especially verbs, and make extensive use of cases and other affixes to convey grammatical information. Pronouns also show some peculiarities compared to other languages. The morphology of Altaic verbs is especially complex, built from various stems and affixes to express things like tense, aspect, and mood.

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141 views

The Altaic Languages Are Agglutinative in Word Structure

The morphology of Altaic languages is agglutinative, where words are formed by adding suffixes to root words. This results in polysyllabic words made up of distinct morphemes, each with its own meaning or function. Altaic languages are highly inflected, especially verbs, and make extensive use of cases and other affixes to convey grammatical information. Pronouns also show some peculiarities compared to other languages. The morphology of Altaic verbs is especially complex, built from various stems and affixes to express things like tense, aspect, and mood.

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AhmadSirajMatYusoff
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The Altaic languages are agglutinative in word structure.

This characteristic reveals that (1) words are


formed by adding affixes, specifically suffixes, to the root; (2) a relatively great number of such affixes may
be added, resulting in extreme cases in polysyllabic and polymorphemic words of considerable length
(although three to four morphemes per word is the usual limit); (3) each morpheme in a word has one
distinct meaning or grammatical function; and (4) typically the phonological identity of each morpheme is
preserved, with little or no modification of one word element by another. The Turkish word in-dir-il-emi-yebil-ecek-ler it may be that they will not be able to be brought down is analyzable as root wordcausative
passiveimpotentialpotentialfuturethird person plural, Mongolian eke-yin-iyenof ones own mother as
root wordgenitive casereflexive-possessive. This agglutinative, exclusively suffixal morphology gives
Altaic words a characteristically left-branching structure.
The morphology of the Altaic languages is simple, exhibiting little if any irregularity (e.g., Turkish has only
one irregular verb, to be) or suppletion (as in English went as the past form of go) and no distinct classes
of noun or verb stems (declensions and conjugations) that require special sets of endings.
The noun and verb are highly inflected, but the adjective is not, and it does not agree with what it modifies.
The noun has a plural affix, but numerals are used with the singular (e.g., two man), and the plural is
unused where a general sense is intended: read books may be rendered read book.
Altaic languages are also rich in cases, Manchu having five, Turkish six, and Classical Mongolian seven.
Manchu-Tungus languages have as many as 14 (as in Evenk). An unusual characteristic of the Mongolian
languages is the possibility of double cases, as in Classical Mongolian ger-t-ee from [at] the house
(house-[dative-locative]-[ablative]), eke-yin-drto/at mothers (mother-[genitive]-[dative-locative]).
In Mongolian languages reflexive-possessive affixes and enclitic possessive markers may be adjoined to
the case endings, as in Khalkha mori-d-oos-min from my horses (horse-[plural]-[ablative]-my), Classical
Mongolian basi-tai-ban with his own teacher (teacher-[comitative]-[reflexive-possessive]).
Altaic pronouns have some peculiarities. The nominative case of I shows a special stem in Mongolian and
Manchu-Tungus (compare Classical Mongolian bi I, genitive minu my). These languages likewise make a
distinction between exclusive we (not including the addressee) and inclusive we (including the
addressee). The use of the plural second-person pronoun (you) as a polite singular is general in Altaic. For

the third person, Altaic languages use demonstrative pronouns; they is literally these or those. The
possessive forms of pronouns are widely used in lieu of definite articles.
The morphology of the verb is especially complex, though few of the languages have personal endings
marking agreement in person and number with the subject of the verb, and there is no grammatical
category of mood. Etymologically, almost all verbal forms have a nominal origin.
Apart from finite verb forms, which serve as the main verbs of independent clauses, Altaic languages have
participles or verbal nouns, which may act as nouns or adjectives and which form phrases translating the
relative clauses of other languages; converbs or gerunds, which may act as adverbs or complements to
verbs or serve as the main verbs of subordinate clauses; and so-called imperative or vocative forms, which
serve special functions and typically form clauses of very limited structural types. In Turkic, verbal nouns
that act solely as derived nouns occur alongside the participles. The precise roles played by tense,
grammatical aspect, and mood in the semantics of the various affixes remain an object of study, especially
where Manchu-Tungus is concerned.
The Turkic verb is built on a set of stemspresent, future, aorist, necessitative, conditional, subjunctive,
and two past tensesto which may be added a series of affixes marking tense or mood distinctions in
order to form finite forms, as in the case of gel-iyor-du-ysa-m, the evidential past conditional of the present
stem of the verb gel- to come, or affixes forming participles and verbal nouns; there are also numerous
gerunds. Turkic distinguishes an evidential past tenseused when the speaker has witnessed the events
or the events are common knowledgefrom an inferential pastwhere the events have been reported to,
or inferred by, the speaker.
Mongolian and Manchu-Tungus also are rich in verb morphology, despite lacking such a system of stems.
Classical Mongolian has 5 finite verb forms (3 present tenses and 2 pasts, the meanings of which remain
under study); 10 converbs and 6 verbal nouns, distinguished as to relative tense or grammatical aspect;
and 7 or 8 imperative forms. The Manchu verb may incorporate one or more auxiliary verbs, as in afa-mbi-he-bi had been attacking, which is analyzed as to attack-[imperfect converb]-to be-[perfect participle]-to
be.

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