Synthetic language
A
synthetic language, in
linguistic typology, is a
language with a high
morpheme-per-
word ratio. This linguistic classification is largely independent of morpheme-usage classifications (such as
fusional,
agglutinative, etc.) although there is a common tendency for agglutinative languages to exhibit synthetic properties.
Synthetic languages are frequently contrasted with
isolating languages. It is more accurate to conceive of languages as existing on a continuum, with strictly isolating (consistently one morpheme per word) at one end and highly
polysynthetic (in which a single word may contain as much information as an entire
English sentence) at the other extreme. Synthetic languages tend to lie around the middle of this scale.
Synthetic languages are numerous and well-attested, the most commonly cited being
Indo-European languages such as
German,
Portuguese and
Russian, virtually all the
Altaic languages (comprising
Turkish,
Mongolian and the
Tungusic languages), the
Uralic languages (including
Finnish,
Estonian, and
Hungarian) and
Korean, as well as many languages of the Americas, including
Navajo,
Nahuatl,
Mohawk and
Quechua.
There are several ways in which a language can exhibit synthetic characteristics:
Derivational synthesis
In
derivational synthesis, morphemes of different types (
nouns,
verbs,
affixes, etc.) are joined to create new words. For example:
German:
Luftkissenfahrzeug "air-cushion-travel-machine" = "
hovercraft":
Greek:
uperholisterolaimia (υπερχοληστερολαιμία) "overmuch/high-cholesterol-blood" = "
hypercholesterolemia":
Japanese:
teishaeki (停車駅) "stop-car-station" = "station where the train stops":
Finnish:
pikakaurahiutaleannos "quick-oat-flake-ration" = "a serving of quick oatmeal":
English:
unthinkably = "not-think-possible-(adverb)"
Relational synthesis
In
relational synthesis,
root words are joined to
bound morphemes to show grammatical function:
Nahuatl:
ocaltizquiya "already-(she)-him-bathe-would" = "she would have bathed him":
Japanese:
miseraregatai (見せられ難い) "see-causative-passive-difficult" = "it's difficult to be shown (this)":
Finnish:
juoksentelisinkohan "run-
erratic motion-
conditional-I-question-casual" = "I wonder if I should run around (aimlessly)":
Finnish:
hiutaleannos = "flake-ration";
hiuta+le has the components
hiutua "to thin" and
-le "a small thing produced by the action", and
ann+os is derived from
antaa "to give" and
-os "a mass transferred or made by the action".
In order to demonstrate the "continuum" nature of the isolating-synthetic-polysynthetic classification, some examples are shown below:
Strictly isolating
Tahitian:
Ua marere te manu na te ara means "The bird flew off into the distance." Virtually every word is a stand-alone morpheme.
Rather isolating
English: "He travelled by hovercraft on the sea." Largely isolating, but
travelled and
hovercraft each have two morphemes per word, the former being an example of relational synthesis (inflection), and the latter of derivational synthesis (derivation).
Rather synthetic
Japanese:
Watashitachi ni totte, kono naku kodomo no shashin wa miseraregatai mono desu (私たちにとって、この泣く子供の写真は見せられ難いものです。) means strictly literally, "In our case, these pictures of children crying are things that are difficult to be shown," approximately
We cannot bear being shown these pictures of children crying in more idiomatic English. In the example, virtually every word has more than one morpheme and some have up to five (the particles
ni,
no,
wa are
enclitic case markers, i. e. they are phonologically part of the previous word).
Very synthetic
Finnish:
Käyttäytyessään tottelemattomasti oppilas saa jälki-istuntoa means "Should he behave in an insubordinate manner, the student will get detention." Practically every word is derived and/or inflected, and one word can be considered polysynthetic.
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"). One word expresses the idea that would be conveyed in an entire sentence in a non-polysynthetic language.
Oligosynthetic languages are a theoretical notion created by
Benjamin Whorf with no known examples existing in natural languages. Such languages would be functionally synthetic, but make use of a very limited array of morphemes (perhaps just a few hundred). Whorf proposed that
Nahuatl was oligosynthetic, but this has since been discounted by most linguists.
*
Isolating language*
Linguistic typology
