Analytic vs. Synthetic?

null   Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:33 am GMT
Which way do you prefer?

from Wiki:

An analytic language is any language where syntax and meaning are shaped more by use of particles and word order rather than by inflection. The opposite of an analytic language is a synthetic language.

Features of analytic languages
Analytic languages often express abstract concepts using independent words, while synthetic languages tend to use adpositions, affixes and internal modifications of roots for the same purpose.

Analytic languages have stricter and more elaborate syntactic rules. Since words are not marked by morphology showing their role in the sentence, word order tends to carry a lot of importance; for example, Chinese and English make use of word order to show subject–object relationship. Chinese also uses word order to show definiteness (where English uses the and a), topic–comment relationships, the role of adverbs (whether they are descriptive or contrastive), and so on.

Analytic languages tend to rely heavily on context and pragmatic considerations for the interpretation of sentences, since they do not specify as much as synthetic languages in terms of agreement and cross-reference between different parts of the sentence.

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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 numerous and well-attested, the most commonly cited being Indo-European languages such as Greek, Latin, German, Italian, Russian, Polish and Czech, as well as many languages of the Americas, including Navajo, Nahuatl, Mohawk and Quechua. It is likely that Interlingua can be considered a synthetic language.
Guest   Wed Apr 09, 2008 4:48 pm GMT
Analytic -- in the ideal language, all words would be completely invariant. There'd be no tense, plurals, comparative or superlative forms, no 's possessive markers, etc. There'd be no suffixes or prefixes that convert nouns into verbs and vice versa (example: mug, mugger, muggee), or even the -ly suffix that creates adverbs. Separate particles would be used for all these purposes, instead.
Guest   Wed Apr 09, 2008 4:58 pm GMT
Synthetic: these languages can express subtle details in a more compact fashion.
Skippy   Wed Apr 09, 2008 5:06 pm GMT
It's tough to say... I want to say synthetic, but that would be assuming a lack of exceptions...
guest   Wed Apr 09, 2008 5:34 pm GMT
I want to say synthetic too, because that's what I'm used to, but who can adequately render a judgment regarding this?
K. T.   Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:25 pm GMT
I've never had a preference either way, but I do love how Chinese is like English.
Skippy   Wed Apr 09, 2008 9:27 pm GMT
The thing is, many analytic languages are synthetic in their own way (if you think of the English present progressive tense, for example, "am," "are," and "is" could be considered prefixes or conjugations of the -ing verb following it).
Guest   Thu Apr 10, 2008 1:06 am GMT
<<The thing is, many analytic languages are synthetic in their own way (if you think of the English present progressive tense, for example, "am," "are," and "is" could be considered prefixes or conjugations of the -ing verb following it). >>

Wouldn't they more likely be considered extensions of the subject:

- "I'm gonna head down there now."

- "He's hopin' to avoid the flu this year."

- "They're plannin' to go." (In this case, the 're also alters the pronunciation of they so it sounds like there.)
JLK   Thu Apr 10, 2008 1:12 am GMT
K.T.:
<<I've never had a preference either way,>>

Of course not! God forbid you might offend someone if you liked one better!
Guest   Thu Apr 10, 2008 2:18 am GMT
Don't follow JLK's advices or you will end up being a troll.
Flipper   Sat Apr 12, 2008 7:55 am GMT
Skippy Wed Apr 09, 2008 9:27 pm GMT
"The thing is, many analytic languages are synthetic in their own way "

That is true, also for English constructions like "locomotive breath" or "bicycle colour"
Xie   Sat Apr 12, 2008 8:04 am GMT
>>>It's tough to say... I want to say synthetic, but that would be assuming a lack of exceptions...

In 2008, learning a language means you are already exceptional when many people don't bother to...

... and I shall tell you that analytic stuff isn't straightforward, either. Languages are exceptions per se. Not even Esperanto can be without exceptions -virtually, every word is. You can't focus on the 1+1 stuff of analytic languages and say "they are terribly easy" without considering the more complicated discourse in those (like in synthetic ones) at all.

While I also complain about prepositions of English, I don't think those of my language (called jieci) are much easier, either. Many chunks use different particles, and they could be as annoying to both diligent and lazy students as inflectional endings.
Skippy   Sat Apr 12, 2008 4:42 pm GMT
When I say synthetic assuming a lack of exceptions, I mean case-endings that are regular, as opposed to irregular. For example (I'm making this up), in x language, the accusative masculine singular ending is 'm', unless the stem ends in a front vowel, then it ends in 'n', unless it's a high front vowel, then it ends in 'd' but if it's a rounded front vowel it ends in 'w.'
Xie   Sat Apr 12, 2008 6:06 pm GMT
Yes, I know, but what I mean is learning all those chunks (the small talks for the articulate animal) involves much more work than learning case endings in isolation. Case endings are "meaningless" like radicals of Chinese characters. Surely they are markers for some purposes and are to be learnt, but as I learnt more, I found it more important to be gain proficiency in discourse - any kind for your own needs. I'm still focusing on linguistic competency. While I don't think beginners (like me, learning a second foreign language for quite little time) can understand grammar rules intuitively merely through reading translations of any given texts (i.e. discourse), and thus at least people like me should learn grammar somehow, I think one optimal learning scheme is to acquire grammatical knowledge quickly (not to say acquire the grammar asap) and spend more time on deciphering discourse. I think children don't even do the first step and just jump into discourse - that was how I gained passive knowledge of Mandarin without even 'learning' it and how I couldn't speak English very well after years of ineffective 'study'. I simply heard and deciphered more Mandarin discourse.
Guest   Sat Apr 12, 2008 9:49 pm GMT
When I learn languages, I go through a brief overview of all the main grammar points before I even learn the simple phrases they like to teach students at the beginning of a course, like "good night", "what is your phone number"