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Isolating language

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(Redirected from Isolating morphology) "Uninflected" redirects here. For the use in grammar, see Uninflected word. Not to be confused with Language isolate.

Language with a very low morpheme per word ratio
Linguistic typology
Morphological
Morphosyntactic
Word order
Lexicon

An isolating language is a type of language with a morpheme per word ratio close to one, and with no inflectional morphology whatsoever. In the extreme case, each word contains a single morpheme. Examples of widely spoken isolating languages are Yoruba in West Africa and Vietnamese (especially its colloquial register) in Southeast Asia.

A closely related concept is that of an analytic language, which uses unbound morphemes or syntactical constructions to indicate grammatical relationships. Isolating and analytic languages tend to overlap in linguistic scholarship.

Isolating languages contrast with synthetic languages, also called inflectional languages, where words often consist of multiple morphemes. That linguistic classification is subdivided into the classifications fusional, agglutinative, and polysynthetic, which are based on how the morphemes are combined.

Explanation

Although historically, languages were divided into three basic types (isolating, inflectional, agglutinative), the traditional morphological types can be categorized by two distinct parameters:

  • morpheme per word ratio (how many morphemes there are per word)
  • degree of fusion between morphemes (how separable the inflectional morphemes of words are according to units of meaning represented)

A language is said to be more isolating than another if it has a lower morpheme per word ratio.

To illustrate the relationship between words and morphemes, the English term "rice" is a single word, consisting of only one morpheme (rice). This word has a 1:1 morpheme per word ratio. In contrast, "handshakes" is a single word consisting of three morphemes (hand, shake, -s). This word has a 3:1 morpheme per word ratio. On average, words in English have a morpheme per word ratio substantially greater than one.

It is perfectly possible for a language to have one inflectional morpheme yet more than one unit of meaning. For example, the Russian word vídyat/видят "they see" has a morpheme per word ratio of 2:1 since it has two morphemes. The root vid-/вид- conveys the imperfective aspect meaning, and the inflectional morpheme -yat/-ят inflects for four units of meaning (third-person subject, plural subject, present/future tense, indicative mood). Effectively, it has four units of meaning in one inseparable morpheme: -yat/-ят.

Languages with a higher tendency toward isolation generally exhibit a morpheme-per-word ratio close to 1:1. In an ideal isolating language, visible morphology would be entirely absent, as words would lack any internal structure in terms of smaller, meaningful units called morphemes. Such a language would not use bound morphemes like affixes.

The morpheme-to-word ratio operates on a spectrum, ranging from lower ratios that skew toward the isolating end to higher ratios on the synthetic end of the scale. A larger overall ratio suggests that a language leans more toward being synthetic rather than isolating.

Examples

Some isolating languages include:

See also

References

  1. ^ "A Computerized Identification System for Verb Sorting and Arrangement in a Natural Language: Case Study of the Nigerian Yoruba Language" (PDF). eajournals.org. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
  2. ^ "Analytic language". Encyclopedia Britannica. 20 July 1998.
  3. ^ "Isolating Language". Glossary of Linguistic Terms. 3 December 2015. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
  4. Whaley, Lindsay J. (1997). "Chapter 7: Morphemes". Introduction to Typology: The Unity and Diversity of Language. SAGE Publications, Inc. ISBN 9780803959620.
  5. "Lecture No. 13". bucknell.edu. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
  6. "Morphological Typology" (PDF). studiumdigitale.uni-frankfurt.de. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
  7. "Polysynthetic language". Japan Module. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
  8. "Isolating language". Sorosoro. 5 September 2015. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
  9. Paauw, Scott H. (2009). The Malay contact varieties of eastern Indonesia: A typological comparison (PDF). The State University of New York at Buffalo. OCLC 6002898562. Retrieved 8 August 2021.
  10. Kluge, Angela (2017). A Grammar of Papuan Malay. Studies in Diversity Linguistics 11. Berlin: Language Science Press. p. 22. doi:10.5281/zenodo.376415. ISBN 978-3-944675-86-2.

Further reading

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