An impressive number of existing or ever existing languages inevitably need classification, one of which is the division of languages into synthetic and analytical. Although the existence of these two types is generally recognized, discussions are still ongoing on the criteria that served as the basis for such a classification. This is due to the fact that the analyticity or synthetics of the language can be deduced from both morphological and syntactic considerations.
Morphology
This section of linguistics studies the grammatical forms of words. There are two main strategies for their formation: the use of various morphemes (prefixes, affixes and inflections) or service words. The relationship between the number of morphemes and the number of meaningful words in an arbitrarily selected segment of the text shows the index of synthesized language. American linguist Joseph Greenberg calculated this ratio. For Vietnamese, it is 1.06 (that is, only 106 morphemes were found in a section of a 100-word text), and for English - 1.68. In Russian, the synthetic index ranges from 2.33 to 2.45.
The Greenberg method for distinguishing between analytic and synthetic languages is called quantitative. He suggests that all languages with a synthetic index of 2 to 3 can be classified as synthetic. Languages for which the index is smaller are analytic.
Syntax
The absence of a morphological indicator of the word form requires a more strict word order, which allows you to establish grammatical relationships between tokens. Already from the name itself it is possible to determine which languages are called languages of the analytical system: in order to understand what is at stake, you need to conduct some analysis of the utterance, to determine what belongs to what. In addition to the rigid word order, it is necessary to pay attention to intonation. If, for example, in English, interrogative sentences are introduced using official words, then in Russian you can only establish differences using intonation (for example, “Mom has come” and “Mom has come?”).
Grammar
The syntactic and morphological principles of distinguishing analytical and synthetic languages cannot be considered separately. It is necessary to take into account the grammatical structure of the language as a whole, since the boundary between the two types of information transfer often looks unsteady. If with respect to English, we can confidently say that this is the language of the analytical system (the endings are (e) s, - (e) d, -ing - this is perhaps all that is immediately recalled from English morphemes), then the situation with Russian is more complicated : we see both the active use of inflections (for example, case endings) and auxiliary verbs (in the formation of the future tense of imperfective verbs). A similar situation is observed in other synthetic languages. Like morphology, syntax is just one of many aspects of grammar. And these two sections of linguistics are closely related. Therefore, the difference in the languages of the analytical and synthetic systems can be established only from the standpoint of a comprehensive study of grammar.
Article
An example is the development of articles. In the vast majority of languages, the indefinite article develops from the quantitative numeral “one,” and the definite from the demonstrative pronoun. Initially, it plays a syntactic role: it shows whether the subject is known or not known to the listener. But gradually the article acquires a morphological role, showing the gender, number, and sometimes the case of the noun. This is especially pronounced in the German language, where the article, as a service word, shows the morphological characteristics of the noun, but at the same time it changes, attaching various inflections. With this in mind, is the German language synthetic or analytical? The answer requires the study of grammar in its entirety. The Greenberg index for the German language demonstrates its borderline position: 1.97.
Language in development
The development of comparative linguistics has allowed linguists to formulate the principles of language reconstruction, thanks to which you can get acquainted with the grammatical structure of preliterate languages. Thanks to this, it is known that the connections between the words of the Pre-Indo-European language were expressed through the addition of various morphemes. In written languages, the same situation is observed: Latin is clearly a synthetic language, but the English or French that has arisen on its basis are now considered analytical.
Phonetics
The simplest explanation for this is a change in the phonetic system. Already at the stage of the late Latin inflections, expressed mainly by vowels, begin to be pronounced indistinctly, which leads to the unification of morphological forms. Therefore, there is a need for additional marking of grammatical relations: prepositions, auxiliary verbs and the rapidly developing category of the article become increasingly important. You can often come across the erroneous assertion that the English language has simply lost all cases, except for the nominative (Subjective Case) and possessive (Possessive Case), which arose on the basis of the genitive. Sometimes the accusative (Objective Case) stands out. But in fact, it was not the death of the cases of the Old English language that occurred , but their merger. The current general case in English has preserved the forms of both the ancient nominative and the dative cases.
From analysis to synthesis
There is a reverse process. The future of the Latin language was formed synthetically, but with a change in the pronunciation of its entire form, they began to sound the same. As already mentioned, in this case, the grammar adapts to this process, allowing the use of the forms of the verb habere as auxiliary. This feature has passed into the emerging Romance languages, but its evolution at first glance seems unexpected. In Spanish, the forms of the verb haber became the endings of the Futuro Simple de Indicativo tense, merging with the core of the infinitive. As a result, beloved (for their simplicity) by every person learning Spanish language forms of the future tense appeared: comeré, comerás, comerá, comeremos, comeréis, comerán, in which the endings are -é, -ás, -á, -emos, -éis, -án indicate that once this time was formed using the auxiliary verb. Here it is appropriate to recall the importance of stress and intonation for distinguishing between forms: the Futuro Simple de Subjuntivo form is formed with the same, but only unstressed endings.
Varieties of synthetic languages
Previously, it was mainly talked about synthetic languages of this type, where the main tool for shaping is inflection. It should be noted that such a strategy just requires the use of various service words to clarify grammatical relationships. For example, the Russian word "house" has a zero ending, characteristic of both the nominative and the accusative case. Therefore, to demonstrate that the "house" is not a subject, but an object of action, the use of various prepositions is required.
In inflectional languages , a specific morphological meaning is not assigned to one inflection. The ending -a in Russian can express:
- nominative singular of the 1st declension;
- the genitive case of the singular nouns of the 2nd declension (and for the animate also accusative);
- nominative plural of some masculine and neuter nouns;
- feminine in past tense forms of verbs.
But by inflectivity, the ways of marking grammatical relations in synthetic languages are not exhausted. There are agglutinative languages in which word forms are created by sequentially joining various suffixes and prefixes, for which only one grammatical meaning is assigned. For example, in the Hungarian language the suffix -nak- expresses only the meaning of the dative case, and -aren- in Basque - the genitive.
Synthetic language examples
The most striking examples of the expression of grammatical relationships with the help of inflections can boast Latin (especially the classical period), ancient Greek and Sanskrit. Some languages on this basis are distinguished into polysynthetic, where the use of service words and auxiliary verbs is practically not found. Such languages make up whole families, for example, Chukchi-Kamchatka or Eskimo-Aleut.
Separately, it should be said about Slavic languages. The problem of classifying the Russian language as a synthetic or analytical type was mentioned above. Its development is characterized by the consistent erosion of the system of verb tenses (from the Old Slavonic only the present, some forms of the past and future) are preserved while maintaining an extensive system of declension of the nominal parts of speech. Nevertheless, it is possible to say with a certain degree of certainty that the literary Russian language is synthetic. In some dialectisms, an extension of analytism is observed, expressed in the formation of perfect forms of verb tenses (for example, “I have a cow milked” instead of “I milked a cow”, where the design “with me” corresponds to the verb of possessing “have” used in the construction of perfect forms).
The same situation is observed in other Slavic languages with the exception of Bulgarian. This is the only Slavic language in which the inflectional strategy of declension of the nominal parts of speech has disappeared and the article has been formed. However, some tendencies for the appearance of the article are observed in the Czech language, where the indicative pronoun ten and its forms for other genders precede the noun in order to indicate its popularity to the listener.