Italian as a Fusional Language

In a fusional language inflectional affixes are employed as a primary means of indicating the grammatical function of the words, morpheme boundaries are difficult to identify, and one affix can simultaneously encode several meanings. Using examples drawn from Italian, the main morphological features that tend to cooccur in a fusional language are described: encoding of several grammatical meanings in a same morph, allomorphy, stem suppletion, problematic linear segmentation, agreement, high number of inflectional classes, richness of inflectional paradigms, affixal homonymy and synonymy, word-class distinction, clear-cut distinction between inflection and derivation, and relatively free word order.