Morphological typology

Morphological Typology was developed by brothers Friedrich and August von Schlegel, this is a classification system for languages. There are three main morphological types:

Analytic (isolating)
Agglutinative
Synthetic (inflected)

Table of contents

1 Analytic Languages
2 Agglutinative Languages
3 Synthetic Languages
4 Poly-Synthetic Languages

Analytic Languages

There is little to no morphological complexity in these languages. The word order is very important in conveying and/or stating the meaning and relationship of the words. The root words stand alone in these languages, as they remain unmodified.

Examples of such languages would be Chinese and Vietnamese.

Agglutinative Languages

In these languages, there is some morphological complexity, but the morphemes (structural elements) are always clearly detachable; that is, the root words are modified, but the elements can clearly be taken apart from the original word(s). Even though the root words are modified, they stay the same in that it is only affixes that are added to the root, most commonly added affixes are suffixes. They are added depending on the function of the word in the sentence. Word order is slightly less important than it was in analytic languages. This is because the word endings tell you the role of the words structurally.

Examples of agglutinating languages are Turkish and Japanese.

Synthetic Languages

Synthetic languages are the most morphologically complex of the three types. The morphemes are often not separable from the root or base word. Sometimes the root word is completely undistinguishable and essentially 'disappears.' Word order is not important at all, as it is the morphemes that give the meaning of the words in the sentence. No matter what order you put the words in, the same meaning is held by each order.

An example of a synthetic language would be Latin.

In the early 20th Century, A.F. Pott studied other languages that were not available to the von Schlegels, and added a fourth category: Poly-synthetic Languages.

Poly-Synthetic Languages

This is a more advanced form of the synthetic type. These languages are extremely morphologically complex. They often incorporate many elements into one word or phrase. All elements tend to be fused with the verb stem. Many of the Amerindian languages are poly-synthetic. Innuit is one example, and one specific example is the phrase: tavvakiqutiqarpiit which roughly translates to "Do you have any tobacco for sale?"