Isolating language

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[1] in West Africa and Vietnamese[2][3] (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.[2]

Isolating languages contrast with synthetic languages, also called inflectional languages, where words often consist of multiple morphemes.[4] That linguistic classification is subdivided into the classifications fusional, agglutinative, and polysynthetic, which are based on how the morphemes are combined.[5]

  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. ^ a b "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.