Editing Synthetic language (section)

{{Short description|Type of language morphology}}
{{For|a language consciously designed by people|Constructed language}}
{{Linguistic typology topics}}

A '''synthetic language''' is a language that is characterized by denoting [[Syntax|syntactic]] relationships between words via [[inflection]] or [[agglutination]]. Synthetic languages are statistically characterized by a higher morpheme-to-word ratio relative to [[Analytic language|analytic languages]].

[[Fusional language]]s favor inflection and [[agglutinative language]]s favor agglutination. Further divisions include [[polysynthetic language]]s (most belonging to an agglutinative-polysynthetic subtype, although [[Navajo]] and other [[Athabaskan languages]] are often classified as belonging to a fusional subtype) and [[oligosynthetic language]]s (only found in [[constructed language|constructed languages]]). In contrast, rule-wise, the [[analytic languages]] rely more on [[auxiliary verb]]s and [[word order]] to denote syntactic relationship between words.

Adding [[morphemes]] to a root word is used in inflection to convey a grammatical property of the word, such as denoting a subject or an object.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|title=Language Files|publisher=Ohio State University|year=2016|editor-last=Dawson|editor-first=Hope C.|edition=12|pages=172–175|editor-last2=Phelan|editor-first2=Michael}}</ref> Combining two or more morphemes into one word is used in [[agglutinative language|agglutinating languages]], instead.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Language Files|publisher=Ohio State University|year=2016|editor-last=Dawson|editor-first=Hope C.|edition=12|pages=156|editor-last2=Phelan|editor-first2=Michael}}</ref> For example, the word ''fast'', if inflectionally combined with ''-er'' to form the word ''faster'', remains an adjective, while the word ''teach'' derivatively combined with ''-er'' to form the word ''teacher'' ceases to be a verb. Some linguists consider relational morphology to be a type of derivational morphology, which may complicate the classification.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Sapir/Sapir_1921/Sapir_1921_06.html|title=Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech|last=Sapir|first=Edward|access-date=9 December 2018}}</ref>