Editing Isolating language (section)

==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 language|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 [[grammatical aspect|aspect]] meaning, and the inflectional morpheme ''-yat''/-ят inflects for four units of meaning (third-[[Agreement (linguistics)#Person|person]] subject, [[Agreement (linguistics)#Number|plural]] subject, present/future [[grammatical tense|tense]], indicative [[grammatical mood|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.
<ref>{{cite web|url=https://moodle.studiumdigitale.uni-frankfurt.de/moodle/pluginfile.php/486924/mod_resource/content/2/Synthetic%20and%20analytic_Morpho_Typo.pdf |title=Morphological Typology|website=studiumdigitale.uni-frankfurt.de|access-date=4 April 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | title=Polysynthetic language | website=Japan Module | url=https://www.japanpitt.pitt.edu/glossary/polysynthetic-language | access-date=4 April 2023}}</ref>