synthetic languages. Analytic and synthetic languages

Decor elements 29.09.2019
Decor elements

More about the Russian language. Analytic and synthetic languages.

The elephant is catching up with Moska. The "source" of action is the elephant; the action is "applied" to Moska. The pug is chasing the elephant. Here Moska is the source of action; it is directed at the elephant. How do we guess about it? By endings in words. If pug- then this is the subject, the source of the action; pug is an addition, not a source of action. No matter how you shuffle the words in a sentence, it's still a word pug would be an addition: An elephant caught up with the pug. The elephant caught up with Moska ... The word order does not show where the subject is, where the object is. Show this endings: -a, -y in a word pug, null and -a in word elephant.

Here is a word from some unknown sentence: wave. Is it subject or not? It is clear that the subject is not: the word itself, by its composition, ending -u, says that it is an addition.

So, grammatical meanings can be expressed in the word itself, in its structure, for example, with the help of endings, or grammatical alternations, or doubling the stem ... But these same grammatical meanings can also find their expression outside the word - in a sentence. Example - English sentences: Adogrunsdownanelephant- The dog is chasing the elephant; Anelephantrunsdownadog- The elephant is chasing the dog. Who is catching up with whom - we learn only from the whole sentence, this is evidenced by the word order, and only he. There are languages ​​where grammatical meanings are expressed mainly within the word: Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, Polish, Finnish ... Such languages ​​​​are called synthetic: they combine in a word, form a synthesis, lexical and grammatical meanings. There are languages ​​where grammatical meanings are expressed mainly outside of the word, in the sentence: English, French, and all isolating languages ​​(cf. isolating languages), such as Vietnamese. Such languages ​​are called analytical, they have a word as a transmitter of lexical meaning, and grammatical meanings are transmitted separately: by the order of words in a sentence, function words, intonation ...

Some languages ​​clearly have a predilection for expressing grammatical meanings by means of a sentence, predominantly using analytical indicators, while others concentrate these indicators within a word.

There are no absolutely synthetic languages, that is, those that do not resort to grammatical analysis. So, the Russian language is synthetic, but it uses many auxiliary words - conjunctions, prepositions, particles, intonation plays a grammatical role. On the other hand, fully analytic languages ​​are rare. Even in Vietnamese, some auxiliary words tend to approach the position of the affix.

Languages ​​are changing. For example, the Russian language, distinctly synthetic, shows a slow movement towards analyticism. This movement is microscopic, it manifests itself in insignificant details, but these details are a number, and there are no other details that show counter-motion, i.e., act in favor of enhancing synthesis. Here is an example: instead of a form grams, kilograms(genitive case plural) in everyday speech is often used - in the role of this case - a form without -ov: three hundred grams of cheese, five kilograms of potatoes. Strict literary norm requires in these cases grams, kilograms. New, recently widespread units of measurement in the SI system also have a form in the genitive plural that is equal to the form of the nominative case: one hundred bit, eman, gauss, angstrom etc., and already as a norm. The difference seems to be small - to say grams or gram. But notice: grams- the form itself says that it is the genitive plural. Gram is the singular nominative and plural genitive. The only way to tell them apart is in the sentence. Consequently, the exact indication of the case is shifted from the "shoulders" of the word to the "shoulders" of the sentence. The fact is private, this is an insignificant detail, but many details add up to big picture: analytical trends in the Russian language of the XX century. intensify.

It turned out that the younger the generation, the more inclined it is to use analytical constructions - in cases where the language makes it possible to choose between analyticism and synthetism. All this together allows us to say that the Russian literary language of the last century is slowly accumulating the features of analyticism. How far will this movement go?

Will it continue in the future? It's hard to predict. But there is no doubt that - with an extremely slow pace of change - our language will remain vividly synthetic for centuries to come.

// encyclopedic Dictionary philologist (linguistics)

/Comp. M. V. Panov. - M .: Pedagogy, 1984 - p.: 25-26

An impressive number of existing or ever existing languages ​​inevitably needs to be classified, one of which is the division of languages ​​into synthetic and analytical. Although the existence of these two types is generally recognized, the criteria that served as the basis for such a classification are still under discussion. This is due to the fact that the analyticity or syntheticity of a language can be deduced from both morphological and syntactic considerations.

Morphology

This branch 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 auxiliary words. The relationship between the number of morphemes and the number meaningful words in an arbitrarily selected segment of the text shows the index of language synthesis. The American linguist Joseph Greenberg calculated this ratio. For Vietnamese, it is 1.06 (that is, in a segment of text 100 words long, only 106 morphemes were found), and for English - 1.68. In Russian, the synthetic index ranges from 2.33 to 2.45.

Greenberg's method for establishing the difference between analytic and synthetic languages ​​is called quantitative. He assumes that all languages ​​with a synthetic index from 2 to 3 can be classified as synthetic. Languages ​​for which the index is less are analytic.

Syntax

The absence of a morphological indicator of the word form requires a stricter word order, which allows you to establish grammatical relationships between lexemes. Already from the name itself, you can determine which languages ​​​​are called languages. analytical system: to understand what is at stake, you need to conduct some analysis of the statement, to determine what refers 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 function words, then in Russian it is possible to establish differences only with the help of intonation (for example, "Mom came" and "Mom came?").

Grammar

The syntactic and morphological principles of distinguishing between analytic 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 in relation to English we can confidently say that this is the language of the analytical system (the endings - (e) s, - (e) d, -ing - that's, perhaps, all that is immediately remembered from English morphemes), then with Russian the situation 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, it develops from the quantitative numeral "one", and the definite one - from the demonstrative pronoun. Initially, it plays a syntactic role: it shows whether the subject is known or unknown to the listener. But gradually the article also acquires a morphological role, showing the gender, number, and sometimes even the case of the noun. This is especially evident in the German language, where the article, as a function word, shows the morphological characteristics of the noun, but at the same time it changes, adding various inflections. Given this feature, is German a synthetic or analytical language? The answer requires the study of grammar in its totality. Greenberg index for German language demonstrates its borderline position: 1.97.

Language in development

The development of comparative linguistics allowed linguists to formulate the principles of language reconstruction, thanks to which one can get acquainted with the grammatical structure of pre-written languages. Thanks to this, it is known that the connections between the words of the Proto-Indo-European language were expressed by adding various morphemes. In written languages, the same situation is observed: Latin is clearly a synthetic language, but English or French that arose on its basis are now considered analytical.

Phonetics

The simplest explanation for this is a change in phonetic order. Already at the stage of late Latin, inflections, expressed mainly in vowel sounds, begin to be pronounced indistinctly, which leads to the unification of morphological forms. Therefore, there is a need for additional marking of grammatical connections: prepositions, auxiliary verbs and the rapidly developing category of the article are becoming increasingly important. One often encounters the erroneous assertion that English language 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 case (Objective Case) is also distinguished. But in fact, it was not the withering away of cases, but their merger. The current common case in English has retained the forms of both the ancient nominative and dative cases.

From analysis to synthesis

There is also a reverse process. The future tense of the Latin language was formed synthetically, but with a change in the pronunciation of all its forms, they began to sound the same. As already mentioned, in this case, the grammar adapts to this process, allowing the use of forms of the verb habere as auxiliary. This feature has passed into the emerging Romance languages, but its evolution at first glance looks unexpected. In Spanish, the forms of the verb haber became the endings of the Futuro Simple de Indicativo tense, merging with the stem of the infinitive. As a result, favorite (for their simplicity) by each student arose Spanish language human forms of the future tense: comeré, comerás, comerá, comeremos, comeréis, comerán, in which the endings -é, -ás, -á, -emos, -éis, -án indicate that this tense was once formed with auxiliary verb. Here it is appropriate to recall the importance of stress and intonation for distinguishing forms: the Futuro Simple de Subjuntivo form is formed with the same, but only unstressed endings.

Varieties of synthetic languages

Previously, it was mainly said 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 functional words to clarify grammatical connections. For instance, Russian word"house" has a zero ending, characteristic of both the nominative and accusative cases. Therefore, to demonstrate that "house" is not the subject, but the object of the action, the use of various prepositions is required.

In one inflection, no specific morphological meaning is assigned. The ending -a in Russian can express:

  • nominative singular nouns of the 1st declension;
  • genitive singular nouns of the 2nd declension (and for animate ones also accusative);
  • nominative plural of some masculine and neuter nouns;
  • feminine in the past tense of verbs.

But the ways of marking grammatical connections in synthetic languages ​​are not limited to inflection. There are in which word forms are created by successively attaching various suffixes and prefixes, for which only one grammatical meaning is assigned. For example, in Hungarian, the suffix -nak- expresses only the meaning of the dative case, while -aren- in Basque expresses the genitive case.

Examples of synthetic languages

The most striking examples of the expression of grammatical connections using inflections can boast of Latin (especially of the classical period), ancient Greek and Sanskrit. Some languages ​​on this basis are distinguished as polysynthetic, where the use of function 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 the Slavic languages. The problem of classifying the Russian language as a synthetic or analytical type was mentioned above. Its development is characterized by a consistent blurring of the system of verb tenses (only the present, some forms of the past and future remained from Old Church Slavonic), while maintaining a branched system of declension of nominal parts of speech. Nevertheless, it can be said with a certain degree of certainty that the literary Russian language is synthetic. In some dialectisms, there is an expansion of analyticism, expressed in the formation of perfect forms of verb tenses (for example, "I have milked a cow" instead of "I have milked a cow", where the construction "at me" corresponds to the verb of possession "to 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 nominal parts of speech disappeared and the article was formed. However, some tendencies towards the appearance of the article are observed in Czech, where demonstrative pronoun ten and its other gender forms preface the noun to indicate its notoriety to the listener.

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What does "synthetic languages" mean?

Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1998

synthetic languages

a class of languages ​​in which grammatical meanings are expressed within a word using affixes or internal inflection, e.g. Russian, German, Lithuanian and other Indo-European languages.

Synthetic languages

typological class of languages ​​in which synthetic forms of expression of grammatical meanings predominate. S. i. are contrasted with analytical languages, in which grammatical meanings are expressed with the help of function words, and polysynthetic languages, in which several nominal and verbal lexical meanings are combined within an integrally formed complex (outwardly resembling a word). The basis for dividing languages ​​into synthetic, analytic, and polysynthetic is essentially syntactic, so this division intersects with the morphological classification of languages, but does not coincide with it. The division of languages ​​into synthetic and analytical was proposed by A. Schlegel (only for inflectional languages), A. Schleicher extended it to agglutinative languages. Morphemes included in a word in S. Ya. can be combined according to the principle of agglutination, fusion, and undergo positional alternations (for example, Turkic vowel harmony). Synthetic forms are found in a large part of the world's languages. Since the language, in principle, is not typologically homogeneous, the term "S. I am." applied in practice to languages ​​with a sufficiently high degree of synthesis, for example, Turkic, Finno-Ugric, most Semitic-Hamitic, Indo-European (ancient), Mongolian, Tungus-Manchurian, some African (Bantu), Caucasian, Paleo-Asiatic, American Indian languages.

Lit .: Kuznetsov P. S., Morphological classification of languages, M., 1954; Uspensky B. A., Structural typology of languages, M., 1965; Rozhdestvensky Yu. V., Typology of the word, M., 1969; Linguistic typology, in: General linguistics, vol. 2, M., 1972; Home K. M., Language typology 19th and 20th century views, Wash., 1966; Pettier B., La typologie, in Le langage, Encyclopedie de la Pleiade, v. 25, P., 1968.

MORPHOLOGICAL TYPES OF LANGUAGES

Morphological typology (and this is chronologically the first and most developed area of ​​typological research) takes into account, firstly, the ways of expressing grammatical meanings and, secondly, the nature morpheme compounds in a word. Depending on the ways of expressing grammatical meanings, there are synthetic and analytic languages(§ 26; see also § 27). Depending on the nature of the connection, morphemes are distinguished agglutinative and fusional languages(§§ 28-29).

26. Analytic and synthetic languages

In the languages ​​of the world, there are two main groups of ways of expressing grammatical meanings: 1) synthetic ways and 2) analytical. Synthetic methods are characterized by the combination of a grammatical indicator with the word itself (this is the motivation for the term synthetic). Such an indicator that introduces the grammatical meaning "inside the word" can be ending, suffix, prefix, internal inflection(i.e. alternation of sounds in the root, for example, flow - flow - flow), the change accents (legs - feet), suppletive modification word stems ( I am - me, go - go, good - better), transfix(in Semitic languages: a complex consisting of several vowels, which is "woven" into a three-consonant root, adding to it

Most languages ​​have both analytical and synthetic means of expressing grammatical meanings, but their specific gravity happens different. Depending on which methods prevail, languages ​​of a synthetic and analytical type are distinguished. Synthetic languages ​​include all Slavic languages ​​(except Bulgarian), Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Yakut, German, Arabic, Swahili and many others. others

The languages ​​of the analytical system include all the Romance languages, Bulgarian, English, Danish, Modern Greek, New Persian and many others. etc. Analytical methods in these languages ​​prevail, however, synthetic grammatical means are also used to some extent.

Languages ​​in which there are almost no possibilities for the synthetic expression of a number of grammatical meanings (as in Chinese, Vietnamese, Khmer, Lao, Thai, etc.), in early XIX v. called amorphous("formless"), i.e. as if devoid of form, but already Humboldt called them insulating. It has been shown that these languages ​​are by no means devoid of grammatical form, just a series of grammatical meanings (namely, syntactic,

relational meanings) are expressed here separately, as if "isolated", from the lexical meaning of the word (For details, see Solntseva 1985, Solntsev 1995).

There are languages ​​in which a word, on the contrary, turns out to be so “overburdened” with various auxiliary and dependent root morphemes that such a word turns into a sentence in meaning, but at the same time remains formalized as a word. Such a "word-sentence" device is called incorporation(lat. incorporate- "inclusion in its composition", from lat. in- "in and corpus- "body, whole"), and the corresponding languages ​​- incorporating, or polysynthetic(some Indian languages, Chukchi, Koryak, etc.).

Synthetic(from Greek. synthesis- combination, compilation, association) - based on synthesis, united.

In the languages ​​of the world, there are two main groups of ways of expressing grammatical meanings: 1) synthetic ways and 2) analytical. Synthetic methods are characterized by the combination of a grammatical indicator with the word itself (this is the motivation for the term synthetic). Such an indicator that introduces a grammatical meaning "inside the word" can be ending, suffix, prefix, internal inflection(i.e. alternation of sounds in the root, for example, flow - flows - flow), the change accents(legs - legs)suppletive modification word bases (I - me, I go - I go, good - better),transfix(in Semitic languages: a complex consisting of several vowels, which is “woven” into a three-consonant root, adding lexico-grammatical and syntactic meanings to it and thus completing the root to the required word form), repeat morphemes.

A common feature of analytical methods is the expression grammatical meaning outside the word, apart from it - for example, with the help of prepositions, conjunctions, articles, auxiliary verbs and other functional words, as well as with the help of word order and the general intonation of the statement.

Most languages ​​have both analytical and synthetic means of expressing grammatical meanings, but their specific weight varies. Depending on which methods prevail, languages ​​of a synthetic and analytical type are distinguished. Synthetic languages ​​include all Slavic languages ​​(except Bulgarian), Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Yakut, German, Arabic, Swahili and many others. others

The languages ​​of the analytical system include all the Romance languages, Bulgarian, English, Danish, Modern Greek, New Persian and many others. etc. Analytical methods in these languages ​​prevail, however, synthetic and grammatical means are used to some extent.

Languages ​​in which there are almost no possibilities for the synthetic expression of a number of grammatical meanings (as in Chinese, Vietnamese, Khmer, Lao, Thai, etc.) at the beginning of the 19th century. called amorphous("formless"), i.e. as if devoid of form, but already Humboldt called them insulating.

It was proved that these languages ​​are by no means devoid of grammatical form, just a number of grammatical meanings (namely, syntactic, relational meanings) are expressed here separately, as if “isolated”, from the lexical meaning of the word.

There are languages ​​in which a word, on the contrary, turns out to be so “overburdened” with various auxiliary and dependent root morphemes that such a word turns into a sentence in meaning, but at the same time remains shaped like a word. Such a device "word-sentence" is called incorporation(lat. incorporatio-"inclusion in one's composition", from lat. in- "in and corpus-"body, whole"), and the corresponding languages ​​- incorporating, or polysynthetic(some Indian languages, Chukchi, Koryak, etc.).

4. Morphological typology of the languages ​​of E. Sepir.

The new typological classification belongs to the American linguist E. Sapir (1921). Considering that all previous classifications are “a neat construction of a speculative mind”, E. Sapir made an attempt to give a “conceptual” classification of languages, based on the idea that “every language is a formalized language”, but that “a classification of languages, built on the distinction of relations, purely technical” and that it is impossible to characterize languages ​​from only one point of view. Therefore, E. Sapir bases his classification on the expression different type concepts in the language: 1) root, 2) derivational, 3) mixed-relational and 4) purely relational (See Chapter IV, § 43.). The last two points should be understood in such a way that the meanings of relations can be expressed in the words themselves (by changing them) together with lexical meanings are mixed-relational values; or separately from words, for example, word order, auxiliary words and intonation - these are purely relational concepts. The second aspect of E. Sapir is that very “technical” side of expressing relations, where all grammatical methods are grouped into four possibilities: a) isolation (i.e. ways of function words, word order and intonation), b) agglutination, With) fusion (the author deliberately separates the two types of affixation, since their grammatical tendencies are very different) (Ibid.) and d) symbolization, where internal inflection, repetition and stress are combined. (In the case of tone stress, for example in the language of Shilluk (Africa), jit with a high tone is "ear", and with a low tone - "ears" - a very similar fact with vowel alternation). The third aspect is the degree of "synthesis" in grammar in three stages: analytical, synthetic and polysynthetic, i.e. from the absence of synthesis through normal synthesis to polysyntheism as "over-synthesis" (from the Greek polys- "many" and synthesis- "connection"). From all that has been said, E. Sapir obtains a classification of languages, shown in the table:

Basic type

Degree of synthesis

A. Simple purely relational languages

1) Isolating 2) Isolating with agglutination

Analytical

Chinese, Annamese (Vietnamese), Ewe, Tibetan

B. Complex purely relational languages

1) Agglutinating, isolating

Analytical

Polynesian

2) Agglutinating

Synthetic

Turkish

3) Fusion-agglutinating

Synthetic

Classic Tibetan

4) Symbolic

Analytical

B. Simple mixed-relational languages

1) Agglutinating

Synthetic

2) Fusion

Analytical

French

B. Complex mixed-relational languages

1) Agglutinating

Polysynthetic

2) Fusion

Analytical

English, Latin, Greek

3) Fusion, symbolic

Slightly synthetic

Sanskrit

4) Symbolic-fusion

Synthetic

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