An
agglutinative language is a type of
synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses
agglutination: words may contain different
morphemes to determine their meaning, but each of these morphemes (including
stems and
affixes) remains in every aspect unchanged after their union, thus resulting in generally easier deducible word meanings if compared to
fusional languages, which allow modifications in either or both the
phonetics or
spelling of one or more morphemes within a word, generally for shortening the word on behalf of an easier pronunciation. The term was introduced by
Wilhelm von Humboldt to classify languages from a
morphological point of view. It is derived from the
Latin verb
agglutinare, which means "to glue together".