The structural heterogeneity of polysynthetic languages is captured by a sublassification of allegedly polysynthetic languages according to their word-formational type (number of roots allowed in a verb form), namely, compositional, transitional, or affixal, and their internal organization (template vs. scope or both). Further parameters show correlations to these independent ones: the number of participants encoded on a verb, the imaginable evolutionary path via which the structure has come about, namely layering (“onion type”), internal expansion (“sandwich type”) or coalescence (“burdock type”), and the characteristic design of a complex verb form: Grammatical category accumulation (integration of non-obligatory, rather grammatical information); ping-pong recategorization (multiple verbalization and nominalization); productive in/excorporation; dependent-head synthesis; multiple packing (integration of rather lexical information); holophrasis (all wordforms being predicates—or particles); composite-stem layout (composite root-like morphemes, unitary concept); and building-block design (multiple classifer-like morphemes make up a wordform). The classification along these parameters reconciles conflicting approaches to polysynthesis.