Typological classification is historically the first manifestation of typology in modern linguistics, starting with the morphological classification of language in the nineteenth century. Morphological typology usually recognizes three canonical types of language: isolating, agglutinating, and fusional, to which is sometimes added a fourth: polysynthetic. The majority of the world’s languages do not correspond to these types. In fact, the traditional morphological typology involves a language as a whole, not a particular construction. It could just as easily be applied to different parts of the linguistic system. For instance, the nominal system of a language may be agglutinative while the verbal system is fusional.
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