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Where does inflection change to agglutination?

From:Roberto Suarez Soto <ask4it@...>
Date:Thursday, December 26, 2002, 17:48
        The question is a bit weird, but I think I can explain what I
mean :-)

        I just realized a few days ago (silly me) that in spanish, we
could speak about "agglutination" in verbal forms. Why? Take this
example:

        Verb "comer" (to eat), Indicative Present

        1s "Como" = "Com" + "o"
        2s "Comes" = "Com" + "e" + "s"
        3s "Come" = "Com" + "e" (+ nothing)
        1p "Comemos" = "Com" + "e" + "mos"
        2p "Comeis" = "Com" + "e" + "is" (sort of)
        3p "Comen" = "Com" + "e" + "n"

        And now, let's look at Subjunctive Present:

        1s "Coma" = "Com" + "a" (+ nothing)
        2s "Comas" = "Com" + "a" + "s"
        3s "Coma" = "Com" + "a" (+ nothing)
        1p "Comamos" = "Com" + "a" + "mos"
        2p "Comais" = "Com" + "a" + "is"
        3p "Coman" = "Com" + "a" + "n"

        So, unless in the 1s person of the Indicative, there are
suffixes that are the same for every verbal form, and that carry the
person and number meaning. And there's also a suffix for each verbal
term. Isn't this agglutination, with only some cases of inflection, or
am I missing something?

        My first bet is that I have the "agglutination" and "inflection"
concepts a bit confused, but wanted to ask just in case :-)

--
        Roberto Suarez Soto

Replies

Danny Wier <dawier@...>
Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>