In Haskell, you're right, you do this by putting every primitive function in its own typeclass.

I think it's a bit harder than that: you'd need a typeclass for every function's interface and every intersection of those interfaces that occurs. So if you had

foo buffy = spoffle buffy (winnow buffy)
bar angel = spodify angel (winnow angel)

then you'd need typeclasses as follows:

class Winnow where
    winnow :: a -> Winnowed a

class Fooable where
    spoffle :: Winnow a => a->(Winnowed a)->(Foo a)

class Barable where
    spodify :: Winnow a => a->(Winnowed a)->(Bar a)