Did you mean | Travel | Economics | Finance | Marketing | Business | Culture | Geography | History | Life | Mathematics | Science | Society | Technology | New site added |
A synthetic language, in linguistic typology, is a language with a high morphemeo-word ratio. This linguistic classification is largely independent of morpheme-usage classifications (such as inflectional, agglutinative, etc.) although there is a common tendency for agglutinative languages to exhibit synthetic properties.
Synthetic and isolating languagesSynthetic 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. SpecimensSynthetic languages are numerous and well-attested, the most commonly cited being Indo-European languages such as German and Russian, virtually the entire Altaic superfamily (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. Forms of synthesisThere are several ways in which a language can exhibit synthetic characteristics: Derivational synthesisIn derivational synthesis, morphemes of different types (nouns, verbs, affixes, etc.) are joined to create new words. For example:
Relational synthesisIn relational synthesis, root words are joined to bound morphemes to show grammatical function:
Degrees of synthesisIn order to demonstrate the "continuum" nature of the isolating-synthetic-polysynthetic classification, some examples are shown below: Strictly isolatingTahitian: Ua marere te manu na te ara means "The bird flew off into the distance." Virtually every word is a stand-alone morpheme. Rather isolatingEnglish: "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 syntheticJapanese: 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 "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 (the particles ni, no, wa are enclitic, i. e. phonologically part of the previous word). Very syntheticFinnish: 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. PolysyntheticMohawk: 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. OligosynthesisOligosynthetic 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. See also
What does Synthetic language mean ? Search with Google !Article on Synthetic language, category, different spelling or sense |
|
Did you mean: Culture | Geography | History | Life | Mathematics | Science | Society | Technology Economy finance business money economy: Economics | Finance | Marketing | Business | Money | Real Estate | Insurance | Retirement | Microeconomics | Economics Top Search: Kazaa | Sex | Pornography | Games | MySpace | Google | Ebay | Paris Hilton | Carmen Electra | Jessica Simpson | Eminem | MapQuest | Dogs | Jokes | Obituaries | MSN Messenger | Splogs | Ringtones | Casino | Poker | Gambling | Lyrics | Anime | Continents and countries in the world: Japan | United Kingdom | Canada | France | Amsterdam | Monaco | Spain | Capitals Cities | Continents | World | Americas | North America | South America | Europe | Africa | Eurasia | Oceania | Antarctica | Asia | Australia A web travel guide for your holidays, hotel and plane tickets: Travel guide and holidays French Version, guide de voyage dans le monde: Voyage et vacances Visit partners of Did you mean Travel: Partners Site Map articles begining from 0 to 9 and A to Z: Site Map 0 to A | Site Map B to C | Site Map D to Z Cours d'anglais, cours de langues pour debutant: Cours d'anglais Annuaire france regions et tourisme: Annuaire OuiX Sexe sur AbSexe, videos porno et annuaire sexe: Ab Sexe Url Rewriting by Atuvu Referencement This work is licensed under a GNU Free Documentation License. Texts derived from WikiPedia Synthetic language ©2006 Did you mean Copyright Notice Page Synthetic language cached on Sunday 07th of September 2008 10:36:18 PM |