Glosario / Glossary

fusional: Fusional languages are those in which the divisions between morphemes tend to be difficult to identify and individual affixes tend to have complex meanings. Spanish, like many other European languages, is fusional. For example, in the word "hablan" 'they speak', linguists differ as to whether "an" is a single suffix with the complex meaning 'third person plural indicative present', or two suffixes ("-a" 'indicative present' plus "-n" 'third person plural'); other analyses are also possible. Fusional languages are similar to agglutinative languages, in that they allow more than one morpheme per word, although usually not as many per word and the morphemes appear to have been squeezed more tightly together. Contrast both types with isolating languages. [Spanish: fusional]