Editing Synthetic language (section)

==Types of synthetic languages==

===Agglutinating languages===
{{Main|Agglutinative language}}
Agglutinating languages have a high rate of agglutination in their words and sentences, meaning that the morphological construction of words consists of distinct morphemes that usually carry a single unique meaning.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.glottopedia.org/index.php/Agglutinating_language|title=Agglutinating language|website=Glottopedia|access-date=9 December 2018}}</ref> These morphemes tend to look the same no matter what word they are in, so it is easy to separate a word into its individual morphemes.<ref name=":2" /> Morphemes may be bound (that is, they must be attached to a word to have meaning, like affixes) or [[free morpheme|free]] (they can stand alone and still have meaning).

*Swahili is an agglutinating language.<ref name=":2" /> For example, distinct morphemes are used in the verbs' conjugation:
**Ni-na-soma: I-present-read or I am reading
**U-na-soma: you-present-read or you are reading
**A-na-soma: s/he-present-read or s/he is reading

===Fusional languages===
{{Main|Fusional language}}
Fusional languages are similar to agglutinating languages in that they involve the combination of many distinct morphemes. However, morphemes in fusional languages are often assigned several different lexical meanings, and they tend to be fused together so that it is difficult to separate individual morphemes from one another.<ref name=":2" /><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://glossary.sil.org/term/fusional-language|title=Fusional Language|date=2015-12-04|website=Glossary of Linguistic Terms|access-date=9 December 2018}}</ref>

===Polysynthetic===
{{Main|Polysynthetic language}}
Polysynthetic languages are considered the most synthetic of the three types because they combine multiple [[word stem|stems]] as well as other morphemes into a single continuous word. These languages often turn nouns into verbs.<ref name=":2" /> Many [[Alaska Native languages|Native Alaskan]] and other Native American languages are polysynthetic.

*Mohawk: Washakotya'tawitsherahetkvhta'se means "He ruined her dress" (strictly, 'He made the-thing-that-one-puts-on-one's body ugly for her'). This one inflected verb in a polysynthetic language expresses an idea that can only be conveyed using multiple words in a more analytic language such as English.

===Oligosynthetic===<!---[[Oligosynthetic language]] redirects here after AfD with result "Merge"--->
Oligosynthetic languages are a theoretical notion created by [[Benjamin Whorf]]. Such languages would be functionally synthetic, but make use of a very limited array of morphemes (perhaps just a few hundred). The concept of an oligosynthetic language type was proposed by Whorf to describe the [[Native American languages|Native American]] language [[Nahuatl]], although he did not further pursue this idea.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Ellos |first=William J |year=1982 |title=Benjamin Lee Whorf and Ultimate Reality and Meaning |journal=Ultimate Reality and Meaning |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=140–150 |doi=10.3138/uram.5.2.140 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Though no natural language uses this process, it has found its use in the world of [[conlang|constructed languages]], in [[international auxiliary language|auxlangs]] such as Ygyde<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://csqbtzv.cluster029.hosting.ovh.net|title=Ygyde Language Introduction|access-date=16 May 2024}}</ref> and [[aUI (constructed language)|aUI]].