The smallest unit in language that has meaning is called a morpheme. Some languages use relatively few morphemes-per-word like English: for example, the word "cats" can be broken into two morphemes -- "cat" and "-s". "Two" can't be broken down any further, so it has a 1-to-1 mapping between morphemes and words.
Other languages use a lot of morphemes-per-word. One strategy to create words from morphemes is called agglutination (meaning to glue things together). An agglutinative language takes all the morphemes that are going to go into a word, and with minimal or no changes, glues them together to form a word.
For example, the Yupik word "tuntussuqatarniksaitengqiggtuq" means "He had not yet said again that he was going to hunt reindeer".
It is formed by taking the following morphemes and agglutinating them:
Agglutinative just means you glue (the -glu- refers to this) pieces (suffixes) at the end of words to express lots of things. This exists in English as well, but in restricted forms. For example blue+ish, quick+ly, blue+ness, look+ed. In an agglutinative language, this is how most of the things are expressed.
For example a totally normal Hungarian word is: szolgáltatásaiért = szolgá+l+tat+ás+a+i+ért = for his/her/its services. Szolga means servant, from Slavic origin. Szolgál is a verb meaning to serve. Szolgáltat means to provide service. Szolgáltatás means service (as in "goods and services", "internet service", etc.). Szolgáltatása means his/her/its service. Szolgáltatásai means his/her/its services. Szolgáltatásaiért means "for his/her/its services".
+ ás = gerund-forming suffix, makes a verbal noun from a verb [3]
+ ai = marker for plural possession [4]
+ ért = causal-final suffix, denotes the reason for the action [5]
These suffixes are morphemes you can (with some simple rules) just add to words to achieve the corresponding change in meaning. In CS terms, they're functions that take the input word and make a new one. Each one of the above, used somewhere else:
winter -> to spend the winter: tél + l -> telel
to read -> to make them read: olvas + tat -> olvastat
to read -> the reading: olvas + ás -> olvasás
house -> his houses: ház + ai -> házai
house -> because of, affecting the house: ház + ért -> házért
Simply put: a lot of grammar is based on appending to words. E.g. the Turkish word for book is Kitab (shared by a bunch of other middle eastern languages too). My Book is Kitabim. Your book is Kitabsin. (Note last example is vastly simplified, a proper Turkish speaker should correct it)
It allows for a lot of really short sentences; here's a nonsensical example:
His book is on fire - kitabı yanıyor.
The word endings is sufficient to provide context and meaning.
If you find Turkish to be too difficult to learn, try Malay. It's also agglutinative and used by ~300 million people (Malay and Indonesian are for all practical purposes the same language).
The article notes that in some languages it is possible to form sentences by chaining appendixes to them.
An example in Finnish:
- jousta (normal form of the verb run)
- juoksen (I run)
- juoksentelen (I run around)
- juoksentelisinkohan (I wonder should I run around)
- juostaankohammekohaan (I wonder do we run)
The two later forms are very rarely used, and I have no idea whether the last form is even correct. I have some friends who insist on talking like this. Usually, people express the same things with more words, such as juoksentelisinkohan is equivalent to about:
- I wonder., that. should. my (in this context, me). run. around.
The . are to separate the words.
Yet, it would be perfectly fine to just append a question mark to juoksentelisinkohan or juostaankohammekohaan and it would be a one-word sentence. An interesting remark is that in practice the question mark is redundant in both cases, as the -ko- part in the words reduces the only interpretation of the word to be a question.
I have absolutely no idea how would one formalize all this.
"Juostaankohammekohaan" is not right. It should probably be either "juoksemmekohan" "I wonder if we will run" or "juostaankohan" "I wonder if it will be run" (passive voice).
The frequentative forms would be "juoksentelemmekohan" and "juoksennellaankohan" respectively.
Other languages use a lot of morphemes-per-word. One strategy to create words from morphemes is called agglutination (meaning to glue things together). An agglutinative language takes all the morphemes that are going to go into a word, and with minimal or no changes, glues them together to form a word.
For example, the Yupik word "tuntussuqatarniksaitengqiggtuq" means "He had not yet said again that he was going to hunt reindeer". It is formed by taking the following morphemes and agglutinating them:
"tuntu-ssur-qatar-ni-ksaite-ngqiggte-uq"