Synthetic language
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, 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 '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). Analytic languages predominantly use auxiliary verbs and word order.
Combining two or more morphemes into one word is used in agglutinating languages, instead. 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 vs relational
Derivational and relational synthesis represent opposite ends of a spectrum. In derivational synthesis, various whole nouns, verbs, and affixes are combined 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.
Derivational synthesis examples
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:
- English derivational synthesis example
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]."
- English word chains such as child labour law may count as well, because it is merely an orthographic convention to write them as isolated words. Grammatically and phonetically they behave like one word (stress on the first syllable, plural morpheme at the end).
- German derivational synthesis
Aufsicht
supervision
-s-
Rat
council
-s-
Mitglieder
members
Versammlung
assembly
"Meeting of members of the supervisory board"
- This word demonstrates the hierarchical construction of synthetically derived words:
- Aufsichtsratsmitglieder "members of [the] supervisory board"
- + Versammlung "meeting"
- Aufsichtsrat "supervisory board"
- + s (Fugen-s)
- + Mitglieder "members"
- Aufsicht "supervision"
- + s + Rat "council, board"
- auf- "on, up"
- + Sicht "sight"
- Mitglied "member"
- + -er plural
- mit- "co-"
- + Glied "element, constituent part"
- ver- (a verb prefix of variable meaning)
- + sammeln "to gather"
- + -ung present participle
- auf-, mit-, -er, ver-, and -ung are all bound morphemes.
- Greek derivational synthesis
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"
- Polish derivational synthesis
przystań
harbor
-ek
DIM
"Public transportation stop [without facilities]" (i.e. bus stop, tram stop, or rail halt)—compare to dworzec.
- Russian derivational synthesis
досто
dosto
deserving
примечательн
primečátelʹn
notable
-ость
-ostʹ
NS
"Place of interest"
-
Malayalam derivational synthesis
-
അങ്ങനെയല്ലാതായിരിക്കുമ്പോളൊക്കെത്തന്നെ (aṅṅaneyallātāyirikkumpōḷokkettanne)
- "such/so + not + has + been + when + occasions + all + exclusively"
- "on all such occasions when it has been not so"
-
അങ്ങനെയല്ലാതായിരിക്കുമ്പോളൊക്കെത്തന്നെ (aṅṅaneyallātāyirikkumpōḷokkettanne)
- Persian derivational synthesis
نواز
navâz
play music
ــنده
-ande
-ing
ــگی
-gi
NS
"musicianship" or "playing a musical instrument"
- Ukrainian derivational synthesis
на
na
direction/intent
вз
vz
adjective
до
do
approach
гін
hin
fast movement
"after something or someone that is moving away"
- international classical compounds based on Greek and Latin derivational synthesis
hyper-
high
cholesterol
cholesterol
-emia
blood
the presence of high levels of cholesterol in the blood.
- alternately, cholesterol can be read as chole- + στερεός(stereós) + -ol, as in "bile + solid + [alcohol suffix]", or "the solid alcohol present in bile".
Relational synthesis
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. 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"
-
Albanian
-
jepmani
- "give + to me + it[singular] + you[plural] + [imperative mood]"
- 'You, give it to me'
-
jepmani
- Japanese
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"
- 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
Agglutinating languages
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. 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. 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).
- Swahili is an agglutinating language. For example, distinct morphemes are used in the conjugation of verbs:
- Ni-na-soma: I-present-read or I am reading
- U-na-soma: you-present-read or you are reading
- A-na-soma: s/he-present-read or s/he is reading
Fusional languages
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.
Polysynthetic
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. Many Native Alaskan and other Native American languages are polysynthetic.
- Mohawk: Washakotya'tawitsherahetkvhta'se means "He ruined her dress" (strictly, 'He made the-thing-that-one-puts-on-one's body ugly for her'). This one inflected verb in a polysynthetic language expresses an idea that can only be conveyed using multiple words in a more analytic language such as English.
Oligosynthetic
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. Though no natural language uses this process, it has found its use in the world of constructed languages, in auxlangs such as aUI.
Synthetic and analytic languages
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, 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.
Isolating
- Mandarin lacks inflectional morphology almost entirely, and most words consist of either one- or two-syllable morphemes, with compound words words being very numerous.
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.
Analytic
-
English:
- "He travelled by hovercraft on the sea" is largely isolating, but travelled (although it is possible to say "did travel" instead) and hovercraft each have two morphemes per word, the former being an example of relational synthesis (inflection), and the latter of compounding synthesis (a special case of derivation with another free morpheme instead of a bound one).
Rather synthetic
-
Japanese:
- 私たちにとって、この泣く子供の写真は見せられがたいものです。 Watashitachi ni totte, kono naku kodomo no shashin wa miseraregatai mono desu means strictly literally: "To us, these photos of a child crying are things that are difficult to be shown", meaning 'We cannot bear to be shown these photos of a child crying' in more idiomatic English. In the example, most words have more than one morpheme and some have up to five.
-
Hebrew:
- אתמול סיפרתי לחברים שלי על הרעיון, שעליו חשבתי Etmol siparti l'khaverim sheli al hara'ayon, she'alav khashavti "Yesterday I told my friends about the idea I was thinking about". From this example we can see that Hebrew verbs are conjugated by tense, mood, and person (including gender and number). In addition, there are prepositions that are conjugated, but by person, like של shel and על al. More at Modern Hebrew grammar.
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 |
Very synthetic
-
Finnish:
- Käyttäytyessään tottelemattomasti oppilas saa jälki-istuntoa
- "Should they behave in an insubordinate manner, the student will get detention."
- Structurally: behaviour (present/future tense) (of their) obey (without) (in the manner/style) studying (they who (should be)) gets detention (some). Practically every word is derived and/or inflected. However, this is quite formal language, and (especially in speech) would have various words replaced by more analytic structures: Kun oppilas käyttäytyy tottelemattomasti, hän saa jälki-istuntoa 'When the student behaves in an insubordinate manner, they will get detention'.
-
Georgian:
- გადმოგვახტუნებინებდნენო gadmogvakht'unebinebdneno (gad-mo-gv-a-kht'un-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, direct and indirect objects, their plurality, relation between them, direction of the action, conditional and causative markers, etc.
-
Classical Arabic:
- أوأعطيناكموه عبثًا؟ ’awa’aʼṭaynākumūhu ʻabathan (wa-aʻṭay-nā-ku-mū-hu ʻabath-an)
- "And did we give it (masc.) to you futilely?" in Arabic, each word consists of one root that has a basic meaning (aʻṭā 'give' and ʻabath 'futile'). Prefixes and suffixes are added to make the word incorporate subject, direct and indirect objects, number, gender, definiteness, etc.
Increase in analyticity
Haspelmath and Michaelis 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.
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").