A synthetic language is a language which is statistically characterized by a higher morpheme-to-word ratio. In contrast to analytic languages, which break up concepts into separate words, synthetic languages combine (synthesize) them into a single word. Syntactic roles embodied by a word, such as a subject or an object,[1] are assigned by adding affixes (characteristic for fusional languages, a subtype of synthetic languages). In the present-day English, once a fusional language, only a few remnants of its fusional origin are retained: for example, the role of an object is assigned to the word "who" by adding affix "m" to it (resulting in "whom"); tense is assigned by adding -ed and -ing to a verb; a possessive role is assigned by adding an apostrophe and 's' to it; by adding affix -er either a comparative form is assigned (resulting in faster) or verb is turned into a noun (teach-er).[2] Analytic languages predominantly use auxiliary verbs and word order.
Combining two or more morphemes into one word is used in agglutinating languages, instead.[3] Subsubcategories include polysynthetic languages (most of them in an agglutinative subcategory, with an exception of Navajo and other Athabaskan languages that are often categorized as fusional), and oligosynthetic languages (only found in constructed languages).
Derivational and relational synthesis represent opposite ends of a spectrum. In derivational synthesis, various whole nouns, verbs, and affixes are combined[2] to create new words with distinct concrete meanings. On the other hand, relational synthesis involves attaching affixes to a root word to assign it a syntactic role within a sentence. A single root can participate in both types of synthesis, each occurring with varying frequencies.
The morphemes being synthesized in the following examples either belong to a particular grammatical class – such as adjectives, nouns, or prepositions – or are affixes that usually have a single form and meaning:
anti-
against
dis-
ending
establish
to institute
-ment
NS
-arian
advocate
-ism
ideology
"the movement to prevent revoking the Church of England's status as the official church [of England, Ireland, and Wales]."
Aufsicht
supervision
-s-
Rat
council
-s-
Mitglieder
members
Versammlung
assembly
"Meeting of members of the supervisory board"
προ
pro
pre
παρ-
par
next to
οξύ
oxý
sharp
τόν
tón
pitch/tone
-ησις
-esis
tendency
"Tendency to accent on the proparoxytone [third-to-last] position"
przystań
harbor
-ek
DIM
"Public transportation stop [without facilities]" (i.e. bus stop, tram stop, or rail halt)—compare to dworzec.
досто
dosto
deserving
примечательн
primečátelʹn
notable
-ость
-ostʹ
NS
"Place of interest"
نواز
navâz
play music
ــنده
-ande
-ing
ــگی
-gi
NS
"musicianship" or "playing a musical instrument"
на
na
direction/intent
вз
vz
adjective
до
do
approach
гін
hin
fast movement
"after something or someone that is moving away"
hyper-
high
cholesterol
cholesterol
-emia
blood
the presence of high levels of cholesterol in the blood.
In relational synthesis, root words are joined to bound morphemes to show grammatical function. In other words, it involves the combination of more abstract units of meaning than derivational synthesis.[2] In the following examples many of the morphemes are related to voice (e.g. passive voice), whether a word is in the subject or object of the sentence, possession, plurality, or other abstract distinctions in a language:
comunic
communicate
-ando
GER
ve
you.PL
le
those.FEM.PL
"Communicating those[feminine plural] to you[plural]"
escrib
write
iéndo
GER
me
me
lo
it
"Writing it to me"
ō
PAST
c
3SG-OBJ
ā
water
lti
CAUS
zquiya
IRR
"She would have bathed him"
com
together
prim
crush
unt
they
ur
PASS
"They are crushed together"
見
mi
see
させ
sase
CAUS
られ
rare
PASS
がたい
gatai
difficult
"It's difficult to be shown [this]"
juosta
run
-ella
FREQ
-isin
I.COND
-ko
Q
-han
CAS
"I wonder if I should run around [aimlessly]"
ház
house
-a
POSS
-i
PL
-tok
your.PL
-ban
in
"In your houses"
szeret
love
-lek
I REFL you
"I love you"
Afyonkarahisar
-lı
citizen of
-laş
transform
-tır
PASS
-ama
notbe
(y)
(thematic)
-abil
able
-ecek
FUT
-ler
PL
-imiz
we
-den
among
misiniz?
you-PL-FUT-Q
"Are you[plural] amongst the ones whom we might not be able to make citizens of Afyonkarahisar?"
გად
gad
მო-
mo
გვ
gv
ა
a
ხტუნ
xtun
-ებ-
eb
ინ
in
-ებ-
eb
დ
d
ნენ
nen
-ო
o
"They said that they would be forced by them [the others] to make someone to jump over in this direction"
Agglutinating languages have a high rate of agglutination in their words and sentences, meaning that the morphological construction of words consists of distinct morphemes that usually carry a single unique meaning.[4] These morphemes tend to look the same no matter what word they are in, so it is easy to separate a word into its individual morphemes.[1] Morphemes may be bound (that is, they must be attached to a word to have meaning, like affixes) or free (they can stand alone and still have meaning).
In fusional languages, short morphemes (for example, inflectional affixes) tend to denote several different syntactic roles assigned to a root word they are attached to. Also, they tend to be fused together so that it is difficult to separate individual morphemes from one another.[1][5]
Polysynthetic languages are considered the most synthetic of the three types because they combine multiple stems as well as other morphemes into a single continuous word. These languages often turn nouns into verbs.[1] Many Native Alaskan and other Native American languages are polysynthetic.
Oligosynthetic languages are a theoretical notion created by Benjamin Whorf. Such languages would be functionally synthetic, but make use of a very limited array of morphemes (perhaps just a few hundred). The concept of an oligosynthetic language type was proposed by Whorf to describe the Native American language Nahuatl, although he did not further pursue this idea.[6] Though no natural language uses this process, it has found its use in the world of constructed languages, in auxlangs such as aUI.
The distinction between synthetic and analytic language is a matter of degree. At the most analytic end of the spectrum, in the isolating languages, each word consists of only one morpheme, while at the other end of the spectrum, in polysynthetic languages such as some Native American languages,[7] a single word consists of as many morphemes as an entire English sentence.
In order to demonstrate the nature of the isolating–analytic–synthetic–polysynthetic classification as a "continuum", some examples are shown below.
Chinese text | 明天 | 我 | 的 | 朋友 | 会 | 为 | 我 | 做 | 生日 | 蛋糕 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Transliteration | míngtiān | wǒ | de | péngyou | huì | wèi | wǒ | zuò | shēngrì | dàngāo | |
Literal translation | dawn day | I | of | friend friend | will | for | I | make | birth day | egg cake | |
Meaning | tomorrow | I | (genitive particle(='s)) | friend | will | for | I | make | birthday | cake | |
"Tomorrow my friend(s) will make a birthday cake for me." |
However, with rare exceptions, in Mandarin each syllable (corresponding to a single written character) represents a morpheme with an identifiable meaning, even if many of such morphemes are bound. This gives rise to the common misconception that Chinese consists exclusively of "words of one syllable". Although this may be true both in the case of southern dialects and classical texts, in modern Mandarin two related words (such as péngyou, literally "friend-friend") may be merged into a disyllabic word, in order to resolve the phonetic ambiguity. Another example of a synthetic compound word in Mandarin is míngtiān 'tomorrow' (míng "next" + tīan "day").
A similar process is observed in the Southern dialects of American English, where it is not unusual for the short vowel sounds [ɪ] and [ɛ] to be indistinguishable before nasal consonants: thus the words "pen" and "pin" are homophones (see pin-pen merger). In these dialects, the ambiguity is often resolved by using the compounds "ink-pen" and "stick-pin", in order to clarify which "p*n" is being discussed.
חשב/תי | ש/על/יו | ה/רעיון | על | של/י | ל/חבר/ים | סיפר/תי | אתמול |
I thought | that about it | the idea | about | my | to friends | I told | Yesterday |
Haspelmath and Michaelis[8] observed that analyticity is increasing in a number of European languages. In the German example, the first phrase makes use of inflection, but the second phrase uses a preposition. The development of preposition suggests the moving from synthetic to analytic.
It has been argued that analytic grammatical structures are easier for adults learning a foreign language. Consequently, a larger proportion of non-native speakers learning a language over the course of its historical development may lead to a simpler morphology, as the preferences of adult learners get passed on to second generation native speakers. This is especially noticeable in the grammar of creole languages. A 2010 paper in PLOS ONE suggests that evidence for this hypothesis can be seen in correlations between morphological complexity and factors such as the number of speakers of a language, geographic spread, and the degree of inter-linguistic contact.[9]
According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann, Modern Hebrew (which he calls "Israeli") "is much more analytic, both with nouns and verbs", compared with Classical Hebrew (which he calls "Hebrew").[10]