Synthetic language

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]

^ Dawson, Hope C.; Phelan, Michael, eds. (2016). Language Files (12 ed.). Ohio State University. pp. 172–175.
^ Dawson, Hope C.; Phelan, Michael, eds. (2016). Language Files (12 ed.). Ohio State University. p. 156.
^ Sapir, Edward. "Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech". Retrieved 9 December 2018.

[:2-1] 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.

[:1-3] Sapir, Edward. "Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech". Retrieved 9 December 2018.

[1]

[2]

[3]