1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Agglutination

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1207991911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 1 — Agglutination

AGGLUTINATION (Lat. ad, and gluten, glutinare, literally to fasten together with glue), a term used technically in philology for the method of word-formation by which two significant words or roots are joined together in a single word to express a combination of the two meanings each of which retains its force. This juxtaposition or conjoining of roots is characteristic of languages such as the Turkish and Japanese, which are therefore known as agglutinative, as opposed to others, known generically as inflexional, in which differences of termination or combinations in which all separate identity disappears are predominant.

The term was also formerly used by associationist philosophers for those mental associations which were regarded as peculiarly close. Combination in its simplest form has been called Agglutination by W. Wundt.