Synthetic language

The explanation was not correct. I have now added a more linguistically correct definition, but in my opinion, it needs to be reviewed and added to by one more knowledgeable in linguistics than I am.

--firstfox 12:01, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)Ish ishwar 08:47, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Synthetic language

A synthetic language is defined as one in which a high morpheme-to-word ratio can regularly be seen. This linguistic classification is largely independent of morpheme-usage classifications (such as inflectional, agglutinative, etc) but there is a common tendency for agglutinative languages to additionally be synthetic.

Synthetic languages are often contrasted with isolating languages, however it is often better to consider isolating and synthetic as existing on a continuum with strictly isolating (consistently one morpheme per word) at one end and highly polysynthetic (where one word contains the equivalent of an English sentence) at the other. Synthetic languages would thus be placed at the median point of this scale, and thus it should be clear that there is no hard and fast boundary between these classifications.

There are numerous examples of synthetic languages, the most commonly cited being Indo-European languages such as German and Russian, virtually all of the Altaic language family (Turkish, Mongolian and many Siberian languages), the Uralic languages (Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian), Japanese, Korean, as well as many Native American languages – including Navajo, Nahuatl, Iroquoian languages (Mohawk, Seneca, Mingo – although see polysynthesis), Quechua and languages of the Canadian Northwest Coast (Kwakiutl) and the Amazon rain forest (Desana).

There are several ways in which a language can exhibit synthetic characteristics:

1. Derivational synthesis – large numbers of morphemes are used together to create new words:

German: Luftkissenfahrzeug – ‘air-cushion-travel-machine’ – “hovercraft”

(Sino-)Japanese: teishaeki – ‘stop-car-station’ – “station where the train stops”

Finnish : pikakaurahiutaleannos - ‘quick-oat-flake-ration’ - "a serving of quick oatmeal"

English : ‘before-mention-has been’ - "aforementioned"

2. Relational synthesis – morphemes grouped together to give grammatical functions:

Nahuatl: ocaltizquiya – ‘already-(she)-him-bathe-would’ – “she would have bathed him”

Japanese: miseraregatai – ‘see-causative-passive-difficult’ – “it’s difficult to be shown (this)”

Finnish: juokse·ntel·isi·n·ko·han - ‘run-erratic-potential-I-question-casual’ - "I wonder if I should run around (aimlessly)"

By way of demonstrating the ‘continuum’ nature of the isolating-synthetic-polysynthetic classification, some examples below:

Strictly isolating – Tahitian: Ua marere te manu na te ara – “The bird flew off into the distance” – Virtually every word is a stand-alone morpheme.

Less isolating – English: “He travelled by hovercraft on the sea” – largely isolating, but ‘travelled’ has two morphemes per word, as has hovercraft.

More synthetic – Japanese: Watashitachi ni totte, kono naku kodomo no shashin wa miseraregatai mono desu – “For us, it’s difficult to be shown these pictures of children crying” – Virtually every word has more than one morpheme and some have up to five.

Even more synthetic - Finnish: Käyttäytyessään tottelemattomasti oppilas saa jälki-istuntoa. - "Should he behave in an insubordinate manner, the student will get detention." - Virtually every word is derived, and one word is polysynthetic.

Polysynthetic – Mohawk: “Washakotya'tawitsherahetkvhta'se” – “He ruined her dress” (He made the thing that one puts on one's body ugly for her) – One word for an entire sentence, and thus this sentence is polysynthetic.

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