Morphological typology


	Turkish				Russian
	(agglutinative)		        (inflectional)

      sg         pl	   Masc. sing	Masc. pl.  Fem. sing.   Fem. pl

Nom  adam	adam-lar      stol	stol-y     lip-a	lip-y
Acc  adam-I	adam-lar-I    stol	stol-y     lip-u        lip-y
Gen  adam-In	adam-lar-In   stol-a	stol-ov	   lip-y	lip
Dat  adam-a	adam-lar-a    stol-u	stol-am	   lip-e	lip-am


ISOLATING-Thai:     

     khaw ca     haj  dek   kin khaaw
        he   FUTURE give child eat rice
        'He will feed the child.'

Notice that every meaningful element in the sentence, including
the tense and the causative marker haj, is a separate
word.


AGGLUTINATIVE-Japanese:

     tabe-ru                'eat'
     tabe-masu              'eat (HONORIFIC)'
     tabe-masi-ta           'ate'
     tabe-sase-ru           'make someone eat'
     tabe-sase-rare-ru      'be made to eat'
     tabe-sase-rare-masu    'be made to eat (HON)'
     tabe-sase-rare-masi-ta 'was made to eat'
     tabe-sase-rare-mase-n  'don't make someone eat'

Notice that you can break every word down into pieces and
identify which piece goes with which part of the meaning: 
tabe is 'eat', -sase is 'cause', -rare makes
the verb passive, etc.


INFLECTIONAL-Ancient Greek:   

     leipo   'I leave' 1st person singular present tense
     léloipa 1st person singular perfect tense
     élipon  1st person singular aorist tense

Notice that when you break the words down into pieces (e-,
l-p, -o, -a, -on), they don't
correspond neatly to the elements of meaning--you can't point to
one part and say that that means first person, while another part
means present tense, etc.


POLYSYNTHETIC-Koryak (Siberia):

     MImĦtqantak  'let me go after blubber'

     MI-          'let me'
     mĦtq         'blubber'
     -antak       'go after'

     gas:hIntIlIlinau  'they walked around on the shore'

     g-           PAST TENSE
     as:hIn       'shore'
     tIlI         'walk around'
     -lin         3rd person subject
     -au          plural

Notice that everything in the English sentence is all put
into one word in Koryak.  Both the subject (-lin-au '3rd
person plural') and the object (as:hIn) are right there in
the verb.