Synthetic language (original) (raw)

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Type of language morphology

A synthetic language is a language that is characterized by denoting syntactic relationships between words via inflection or agglutination. Synthetic languages are statistically characterized by a higher morpheme-to-word ratio relative to analytic languages.

Fusional languages favor inflection and agglutinative languages favor agglutination. Further divisions include polysynthetic languages (most belonging to an agglutinative-polysynthetic subtype, although Navajo and other Athabaskan languages are often classified as belonging to a fusional subtype) and oligosynthetic languages (only found in constructed languages). In contrast, rule-wise, the analytic languages rely more on auxiliary verbs and word order to denote syntactic relationship between words.

Adding morphemes to a root word is used in inflection to convey a grammatical property of the word, such as denoting a subject or an object.[1] Combining two or more morphemes into one word is used in agglutinating languages, instead.[2] For example, the word fast, if inflectionally combined with -er to form the word faster, remains an adjective, while the word teach derivatively combined with -er to form the word teacher ceases to be a verb. Some linguists consider relational morphology to be a type of derivational morphology, which may complicate the classification.[3]

Derivational and relational morphology represent opposite ends of a spectrum; that is, a single word in a given language may exhibit varying degrees of both of them simultaneously. Similarly, some words may have derivational morphology while others have relational morphology.

Derivational synthesis

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In derivational synthesis, morphemes of different types (nouns, verbs, affixes, etc.) are joined to create new words. That is, in general, the morphemes being combined are more concrete units of meaning.[3] 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:

Aufsichtsratsmitgliederversammlung

Aufsicht -s- Rat -s- Mitglieder Versammlung

supervision {} council {} members assembly

"The supervisory board's members' meeting"

  1. Aufsichtsratsmitglieder "[the] supervisory board's + members" + Versammlung "meeting"
    1. Aufsichtsrat "supervisory board" + s (Fugen-s) + Mitglieder "members"
      1. Aufsicht "supervision" + s + Rat "council, board"
        1. auf- "on, up" + Sicht "sight"
      2. Mitglied "member" + -er plural
        1. mit- "co-" + Glied "element, constituent part"
    2. ver- (a verb prefix of variable meaning) + sammeln "to gather" + -ung present participle

προπαροξυτόνησις (proparoxutónesis)

προ παρ- οξύ τόν -ησις

pro par oxý tón -esis

pre {next to} sharp pitch/tone tendency

"Tendency to accent on the proparoxytone [third-to-last] position"

anti- dis- establish -ment -arian -ism

against ending {to institute} NS advocate ideology

"the movement to prevent revoking the Church of England's status as the official church [of England, Ireland, and Wales]."

نواز ــ‌نده ــ‌گی

navâz -ande -gi

{play music} -ing NS

"musicianship" or "playing a musical instrument"

навздогін (navzdohin)

на вз до гін

na vz do hin

{direction/intent} {adjective} {approach} {fast movement}

"after something or someone that is moving away"

Relational synthesis

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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.[3] 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:

comunicandovele

comunic -ando ve le

communicate GER you.PL those.FEM.PL

"Communicating those[feminine plural] to you[plural]"

raskestikasvatatav

_raske_-sti _kasvata_-tav

heavy-ADVR educate-PTCP.PRES.PASS

"difficultly-educatable" ("difficult to educate")

ōcāltizquiya

ō c ā lti zquiya

PAST 3SG-OBJ water CAUS IRR

"She would have bathed him"

com prim unt ur

together crush they PASS

"They are crushed together"

見させられがたい (misaseraregatai)

見 させ られ がたい

mi sase rare gatai

see CAUS PASS difficult

"It's difficult to be shown [this]"

juoksentelisinkohan

juosta -ella -isin -ko -han

run FREQ I.COND Q CAS

"I wonder if I should run around [aimlessly]"

გადმოგვახტუნებინებდნენო (gadmogvakhṭunebinebdneno)

გადმო- გვ- ა- ხტუნ -ებ -ინ -ებ -დ -ნენ -ო

gadmo gv a khtun eb in eb d nen o

"They said that they would be forced by them [the others] to make someone to jump over in this direction." (The word describes the whole sentence that incorporates tense, subject, object, relation between them, direction of the action, conditional and causative markers etc.)

Types of synthetic languages

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Agglutinating languages

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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).

Fusional languages are similar to agglutinating languages in that they involve the combination of many distinct morphemes. However, morphemes in fusional languages are often assigned several different lexical meanings, and 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 Ygyde[7] and aUI.

Synthetic and analytic languages

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Synthetic languages combine (synthesize) multiple concepts into each word. Analytic languages break up (analyze) concepts into separate words. These classifications comprise two ends of a spectrum along which different languages can be classified. The present-day English is seen as analytic, but it used to be fusional. Certain synthetic qualities (as in the inflection of verbs to show tense) were retained.

The distinction is, therefore, a matter of degree. The most analytic languages, isolating languages, consistently have one morpheme per word, while at the other extreme, in polysynthetic languages such as some Native American languages[8] a single inflected verb may contain as much information 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, each syllable in Mandarin (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". As the sentence above illustrates, however, even simple Chinese words such as míngtiān 'tomorrow' (míng "next" + tīan "day") and péngyou 'friend' (a compound of péng and yǒu, both of which mean 'friend') are synthetic compound words.

The Chinese language of the classic works (of Confucius for example) and southern dialects to a certain extent is more strictly monosyllabic: each character represents one word. The evolution of modern Mandarin Chinese was accompanied by a reduction in the total number of phonemes. Words which previously were phonetically distinct became homophones. Many disyllabic words in modern Mandarin are the result of joining two related words (such as péngyou, literally "friend-friend") in order to resolve the phonetic ambiguity. A similar process is observed in some English dialects. For instance, in the Southern dialects of American English, 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.

Comparison between English and Hebrew (this table should be read right-to-left)

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

Comparison between English and Bulgarian (this table should be read left-to-right)

Селото селото пустото селото откак заселено
That village that particular village has always been empty that village ever since it was settled

The definite articles are not only suffixes but are also noun inflections expressing thought in a synthetic manner.

Comparison between Classical Arabic and English

أو أعطيناكموه عبثًا
aw aʻṭay-nā-ku-mū-hu ʻabath-an
Or given - we had - [unto] you - it futilely

Increase in analyticity

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Haspelmath and Michaelis[9] 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.

des Hauses

the.GEN.SG house.GEN.SG

'the house's'

von dem Haus

of the.DAT.SG house.DAT.SG

'of the house'

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.[10]

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").[11]

  1. ^ a b c d e Dawson, Hope C.; Phelan, Michael, eds. (2016). Language Files (12 ed.). Ohio State University. pp. 172–175.
  2. ^ Dawson, Hope C.; Phelan, Michael, eds. (2016). Language Files (12 ed.). Ohio State University. p. 156.
  3. ^ a b c Sapir, Edward. "Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech". Retrieved 9 December 2018.
  4. ^ "Agglutinating language". Glottopedia. Retrieved 9 December 2018.
  5. ^ "Fusional Language". Glossary of Linguistic Terms. 2015-12-04. Retrieved 9 December 2018.
  6. ^ Ellos, William J (1982). "Benjamin Lee Whorf and Ultimate Reality and Meaning". Ultimate Reality and Meaning. 5 (2): 140–150. doi:10.3138/uram.5.2.140.
  7. ^ "Ygyde Language Introduction". Retrieved 16 May 2024.
  8. ^ "synthetic language". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved 9 December 2018.
  9. ^ Haspelmath, M, & Michaelis, S. M. (2017). Analytic and synthetic. In Language Variation-European Perspectives VI: Selected papers from the Eighth International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 8), Leipzig 2015. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
  10. ^ Lupyan, Gary; Dale, Rick; O'Rourke, Dennis (20 January 2010). "Language Structure Is Partly Determined by Social Structure". PLOS ONE. 5 (1) e8559. Bibcode:2010PLoSO...5.8559L. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0008559. PMC 2798932. PMID 20098492.
  11. ^ See pp. 65-67 in Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2020), Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199812790 / ISBN 9780199812776