One of the most important questions of linguistics. This method of dividing into groups of all existing means of communication is the newest. The prerequisites for it appeared only in the 16th-17th centuries. The first monumental works on this problem were written in the late XIX - early XX century.
Morphological and genealogical classification of languages
These two types of division into species are the main ones.
The first of these appeared during the Renaissance. In the science of antiquity, almost no attention was paid to the problems of philology, except for the works that are devoted to Latin and Greek. These languages were considered among the scientific community as the only ones worthy of study. All others were called barbarian. It was considered unworthy to study them, since even the very sound of foreign speech usually caused ridicule. People speaking in incomprehensible dialects have been compared to animals emitting inarticulate growls.
In the Middle Ages, the beginning of the history of the development of the morphological classification of languages was also out of the question. During this period, all research in this area was reduced to attempts to explain the diversity of dialects with the help of the legend of the Tower of Babel.
Renaissance opening
The state of affairs changed only with the onset of a new historical period. At that time, many Western scientists and artists were engaged in research on the works of ancient philosophers. This served to increase interest in the classical languages, ancient Greek and Latin, in which these works were created.
Also at that time, many geographical discoveries were made. Sailors conquered new lands. So, there was a need to communicate with the local population of these countries. Accordingly, it was necessary to get specialists in the field of exotic languages as soon as possible. But how to do that? It was necessary to draw at least some parallel with the languages known to Europeans. It was then that the first attempts were made to find common features between them.
The first known classifications of languages appeared in the 15th-16th centuries thanks to the work of Italian linguists.
Related languages
The pioneer in this area was the French scientist Scaliger. In the 16th century, he compiled a list of languages that he called the mothers of all the rest. Among them were: Greek, Latin, Arabic, Irish and others. Of course, this work contained a rational grain, and the ideas of the French linguist later served as the basis for numerous studies. However, much of what Scaliger wrote about did not have any scientific evidence, and sometimes was based only on his guesses.
Pioneer mistakes
As an example of a clear misconception contained in his scientific work, one can name the following statement: "All of the named mother languages are absolutely independent. Their vocabulary and morphology have nothing in common with each other." This scientist supported his theory with an example, citing the word "god" in various languages.
Interestingly, Scaliger did not notice a clear similarity between the Latin word "deus" and the Greek "theos", which is extremely surprising. And accordingly, his statement about the independence of all these languages \u200b\u200bcan also be questioned.
Wonderland
The impetus for a new round of development of linguistics was the numerous expeditions of seafarers to the shores of India, which were made by such travelers as Marco Polo, Afanasy Nikitin and others. During these voyages, many monuments of oriental literature were brought to Europe. Scientists then discovered for the first time on which all ancient Indian literature was written.
Although at that distant time there was not yet a sufficiently developed morphological classification of languages, nevertheless, it immediately became clear to linguists that in the classical languages (Greek and Latin) and Sanskrit, many common features can be found. They contained similarities both in lexical material (the roots of many thousands of words turned out to be the same) and at the morphological level (word formation occurs in a similar way).
New discoveries
Nevertheless, in order to discern in Sanskrit a relative of Latin and ancient Greek, it took scientists about three centuries. Only at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century did they come to this conclusion.
At the same time, the first genealogical classification of languages appeared, that is, one that is based on the geographical location of the countries where a particular language is spoken, as well as on the presence of common ancestors in languages.
However, there were scientists who expressed an absolutely revolutionary point of view on this problem. They said that it was not entirely appropriate to classify languages that have a common ancestor, or those that contain a sufficient amount of similar lexical material, into one group. After all, the roots can be borrowed. In this case, the morphological and syntactic structures will be completely different. These researchers proposed to introduce a morphological classification of languages based on the similar composition of words, as well as ways of forming new terms.
The emergence of a new system
The morphological classification of languages is based on the peculiarity of word formation.
Among the founders of this method of division into types was the famous American linguist Edward Sapir. He is also known for his contribution to the development of the theory that the characteristics of the language spoken by a person determine the characteristics of his thought processes, worldview, and so on.
One of the principles of the morphological classification of languages is the following provision: scientists divide the number of morphemes (that is, such components as the root, suffix, prefix, and so on) contained in a particular text by the number of words. At present, it is customary to evaluate the degree of complexity of a language by the number that is obtained in the process of such an action. The smallest factor can be one.
This result was obtained in the study of the Vietnamese language. This indicator of the morphological classification of languages can be deciphered briefly as follows: there is one morpheme per word. That is, in Vietnamese, all parts of speech consist only of the root. Accordingly, we can say that people who speak it do not encounter such phenomena as declensions, conjugations, and so on.
Typological morphological classification of languages
The above principle of dividing all languages of the world into types refers to the so-called typological classification. It relies on structural features. In addition to the morphological classification of languages, this type can also include lexical, syntactic, phonetic, and others. However, the first one is the most popular.
Types of languages
So what kinds of languages does the typological morphological classification divide into?
The first group to be named is root (isolating). This includes such languages in which each word contains only one morpheme - the root. Accordingly, there is no declension or conjugation in them. All of these languages have certain common features.
The order of words in them always affects their meaning. The location of the members of the proposal is strictly regulated. For example, subjects must always be used before the predicate.
Some of these languages are "vocal". This name has nothing to do with the performance of songs. Although teachers of these languages say that people who study them should have a fairly developed ear for music.
This means that the words in them can change their meaning depending on the intonation with which they are pronounced. These are mainly oriental languages such as Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and so on. In them, indeed, glory does not change depending on the declension and conjugation. Their name - isolating - can be explained as follows: each word in a sentence does not affect the form of others in any way. Strictly regulated is only the place of the members of the proposal. Another characteristic of all these languages should be mentioned: each word in them contains a single syllable. Therefore, even without knowing Chinese (Vietnamese) and hearing a monologue in it, you can easily determine how many words were said.
Agglutination
In this article, according to the morphological classification, the languages of the world are presented in the following sequence: they are named as the composition of the word becomes more complex.
The second group includes the so-called
In them, a word can no longer consist of only one, but of several morphemes. And each has a stable form and meaning. Thus, in Uzbek and many Turkic languages, the affix "lar" usually means the plural. The word "kyz" means "girl". In the plural, this noun will have the form "kyzlar".
These languages include all Turkic, as well as some Finno-Ugric and Caucasian.
Inflectional languages
Why does the Russian language not belong to this group? After all, words in it are also formed by adding certain affixes to the root, which give it a new meaning.
The Russian language can be classified as an inflectional type of languages according to morphological classification. Here, as in the previous group, new forms are formed by adding the corresponding parts of the word, but here these prefixes and suffixes are not static. For example, the plural of nouns can be formed with different endings, depending on the root. If you need to get the plural form of the word "boot", the ending "and" should be added to it, and if the same operation is required to be done with the root "car", then in this case the affix "s" is used.
Universal affixes
In addition, in this subgroup, each specific morpheme is responsible not only for the number, case, or other property. It can combine these functions in itself, which cannot be said about similar parts of a word in agglutinative languages.
Example
You can consider this phenomenon on the example of the ending in the already mentioned word "boots".
In this case, this part gives it not only the plural, but is also responsible for the nominative case, as well as the masculine gender.
Another group are the so-called analytical languages. In them, to form a new form of a word, it is necessary not to change the composition, but to use additional lexemes. Such a language is, for example, modern English. Here, auxiliary verbs are widely used to form the predicate forms.
A sentence-length word
The last group of the classification under consideration are the so-called incorporating languages.
In them, the word usually has many morphemes. This is explained by the fact that in these languages it usually contains a whole sentence.
These languages include Chukchi and some dialects of the Indians.
It is extremely difficult for a Russian-speaking person to understand the essence of this phenomenon. However, in any language, in addition to words formed according to its belonging to one or another group of morphological classification, there are also exceptions related to other types. One could even say that there are no languages that can be described as "pure" inflectional or agglutinative. Therefore, some elements of incorporation can be found in the Russian language. For example, the colloquial word "fishing" contains two roots, the first of which denotes the object to which the action is directed, and the second - the process itself. Something similar happens in incorporating languages.
Language is a constantly evolving phenomenon. Therefore, its structure itself can change over time. Thus, English, now analytical, was once inflectional. The process of its development can be traced by considering the morphological classification of verbs in and changes in it. Today English is moving towards root isolation.
§ 309. The typological classification of languages is the division of languages into certain classes, or types, depending on the nature (type) of linguistic units of a particular level, on the ways and means of expressing their grammatical meanings, regardless of the origin of the language.
The typological classification of languages, in contrast to the genealogical classification discussed above, is relative, it is "always relative and historically changeable due to the variability of the very structure of the language and its theoretical understanding."
To refer to the typological classification of languages in the specialized literature, the term "morphological classification of languages" is often used. This is explained by the fact that the typological classification of languages is most often carried out on the basis of morphological features of words or word forms. It should be considered as a species concept in relation to typological classification, as one of the types of typological classification (for more details, see below).
The typological classification of languages can be carried out according to different structural features - not only morphological, but also syntactic, phonetic (or phonological), semantic (lexico-semantic), etc. On this basis, some linguists distinguish several different classifications within the typological classification of languages, they talk about different typological classifications, or typologies - morphological, syntactic, phonetic (phonological), semantic. The most developed and best known is the morphological typological classification, or morphological typology, of the languages of the world.
§ 310. Morphological classification is called "classification of languages, carried out at the morphological level", i.e. based on the morphological features of words, their grammatical forms. According to B. N. Golovin, "the morphological (typological) classification of languages is based on the similarities and differences in the morphological structure of words (meaning their morphemic structure. - V.N.) in one language or another.
According to the morphological features of words (word forms), according to their morphemic structure, most of the languages of the world are divided, first of all, into two classes, or types, into root and affix languages.
Root languages are considered in which "the word is usually equal to the root, and the relationship between words is transmitted primarily syntactically (word order, auxiliary words, rhythm, intonation)"; in them "there are no affixes of formation, there is, of course, no grammatical change of the word associated with such affixes." In the linguistic literature, root languages are also called isolating, or root-isolating, without affixes (see above), amorphous, analytical.
Root is, for example, most of the languages of Southeast Asia, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc.
affixal called languages in which the grammatical forms of words are formed with the help of affixes - in the broad sense of this term, i.e. in the meaning of affixes proper (affixes in the narrow sense of the word) and inflections, or endings. Among affixal languages, inflectional and agglutinative languages are distinguished.
"Languages inflectional and agglutinative can be called affixal, opposing them to root languages."
To inflectional(inflecting) are languages in which the main means of forming grammatical forms of words and expressing grammatical meanings is the ending, or inflection (external or internal), as a polyfunctional, polysemantic grammatical morpheme. According to B. N. Golovin, inflection in such languages is "a stable and essential feature of the morphological structure of the word." The multifunctionality of inflection lies in the fact that the same inflectional morpheme as part of the same word form is capable of expressing different grammatical meanings. For example, flexion th in word form white expresses at the same time the meaning of the singular, nominative or accusative case, belonging to the masculine gender; flexion -it in word form sees- meanings of the indicative mood, present tense, singular, 3rd person.
First of all, most Indo-European languages (Slavic, Baltic, etc.), many Afroasian (Afroasiatic), or Semitic-Hamitic, languages are inflectional.
Agglutinative(agglutinating) languages (from lat. agglutinare- "glue"), as well as inflectional ones, are characterized by the fact that in them the grammatical forms of words are formed with the help of morphemes, affixes, which in a certain sequence are attached to the stem of the word, "stick", "stick" to it. They differ from inflectional languages primarily in that the morphemes in them are unambiguous, each morpheme expresses only one strictly defined meaning. At the same time, morphemes have a stable phonemic composition, remain unchanged when combined with different stems and with other affixal morphemes.
Agglutinative languages include Japanese, Korean, Turkic, Finno-Ugric, Mongolian, Indonesian, Indian languages, and many African languages.
An example of an agglutinative word form from Turkish: dallarda("on the branches"), where dal-– root-base with the value "branch", -lar-- affix with the meaning of the plural. numbers and -da- affix with the meaning of the local case.
There are also languages in the world that do not fit into the framework of the three morphological types considered. They stand out in a special type of languages, which are called incorporating(from lat. incorporare-"include in its composition, attach"), In such languages, derivative (compound) words (word forms) are used that are equivalent to sentences. They are often also called polysynthetic (literally - "multi-combining").
The incorporating languages include some languages of Asia (Chukchi, Karyak, etc.), many languages of the Indians of North America, etc.
An example from the language of the Nootka Indian tribe: unikw-ihl-"minih-"is-it-a("There were a few lights in the house"), where uniqw- root meaning "fire" or "burn", -ihl-- a root with the meaning "house", -"minih-- plural affix -"is-- affix with diminutive value, -it-- an indicator of the elapsed time, -a- an indicator of indicative mood.
Another example is from the North American Chinook Indian language: i-n-i-a-1-u-d-am("I came to give it to her"), where -d– stem root with the value "give away" to which prefixes are attached i- (indicates the past tense) -P-(transfers the pronominal object "I"), -i-(pronominal object "it"), -a-(pronominal object "her"), - l- (prepositional element), -and-(an indicator of movement directed away from the speaker) and -am(suffix specifying the spatial meaning of the verb).
As can be seen from the review given above, modern linguistics usually distinguishes four morphological types of languages; they are root languages, or isolating, inflectional, agglutinative and incorporating languages. Such a classification has recently been the most famous and popular; it is also reflected in the latest educational literature on the course "Introduction to Linguistics".
Other morphological classifications of languages are also proposed, i.e. classifications based on other criteria, for example, depending on the way the grammatical forms of words are formed and, accordingly, on the way the grammatical meanings are expressed. On this basis, the following morphological types of languages are distinguished: synthetic languages (grammatical forms are formed in a synthetic way), analytical (word forms are formed in an analytical way) and polysynthetic (combine the features of synthetic and analytical languages).
It should be noted that there are no strict boundaries between different morphological types of languages. It is known, for example, that many languages (for example, the languages of Oceania) occupy an intermediate position between root (amorphous) and agglutinative, combine the features of both and "can be characterized as amorphous-agglutinative." Partially, this also applies to the Russian language, which, according to most morphological features, is one of the inflectional ones, i.e. synthetic, but at the same time has some signs of root, or analytical. Many grammatical forms in it are formed in an analytical way, for example, the forms of the prepositional case of nouns ( in the garden, on the shore, about the forest), forms of degrees of comparison of adjectives and adverbs ( more beautiful, most beautiful, most beautiful) forms of the future tense of imperfective verbs, forms of the subjunctive mood, etc. There are many grammatically invariable significant words in the Russian language, such as, for example, adverbs (there, everywhere, today etc.), nouns of foreign origin with a stem in a vowel (cinema, taxi, kangaroo etc.) and others, which is typical for root, isolating languages.
Presentation description Morphological typology of languages and morphological classification of languages by slides
Plan 1. Introduction. Classification in linguistics 2. Principles of morphological classification 3. Inflectional languages 4. Groups of inflectional languages: . Synthetic. Analytical. Polysynthetic 5. Agglutinative languages 6. Root (isolating) languages 7. Incorporating (polysynthetic) languages 8. Conclusion
Classifications in linguistics Comparison as a way of cognition underlies any scientific classification. Comparative-typological linguistics deals with the comparison and subsequent classification of languages. American linguist Edward Sapir in his book "Language" wrote that "all languages are different from each other, but some. . . more than others." So, when learning English or even Latin, we feel that "approximately the same horizon limits our views", i.e. we feel a familiar way of organizing the language, at the same time, learning Chinese will be a more difficult task for most - all because that this language does not seem to have any points of contact with Russian, similar linguistic forms. We can conclude that languages are grouped according to morphological types, languages with similar morphology can be combined into one type group.
In modern linguistics, the type of language is understood as a research model, a set of features that are guided by when classifying languages. By types, languages can be divided based on various classifications: phonetic (vocal languages - the predominance of vocalism, consonantal languages), according to the syntax of languages, word formation, inflection. Languages can be combined into one typological group based on morphological similarities. In this case, the typological classification will be called morphological. It should be noted that this type of classification is the most common and well-known, therefore, the term "typological classification" and "morphological classification" are often used indiscriminately. However, it must be remembered that the first concept is wider than the second. Better than others, the morphological classification has been developed, taking into account the predominance of certain methods and means of expressing grammatical meanings.
1) The number of morphemes in a word, the presence or absence of affixes. Opposite languages with affixes (Russian, Tatar, Eskimo, etc.) root (Chinese). 2) the nature of the connection between the root and affixes. There are languages with fusion (inflectional) and with agglutination (agglutinative). 3) the predominance of the way of expressing grammatical meanings within the word (synthetic structure of the language) or outside it (analytical structure). Based on these principles, 4 main morphological types are distinguished: inflectional, agglutinative, root (isolating) and incorporating (polysynthetic) *. * not recognized by all Principles of morphological classification
The morphological type of languages is called inflectional, in which the predominant grammatical means is inflection, connected to the stem according to the principle of fusion. Inflection is a linguistic ending, the last part of a word that changes with declension, conjugation. Internal inflection is the alternation of phonemes in the root, which serves to form the grammatical forms of the word. Fusion is a linguistic merger of morphemes, accompanied by a change in their phonemic composition at the boundaries of morphemes. Example: the morphemes "muzhik" and "-sk-" give the adjective "muzhik ky". A kind of inflection is the contraction of unstressed elements of the phrase, their merger with the core. Example: “I will come” from “with” and “I go”. Inflectional languages
Groups of inflectional languages The division of languages into synthetic and analytic languages was proposed by August Schleicher (only for inflectional languages), then he extended it to agglutinative languages. The basis for dividing languages into synthetic, analytic, and polysynthetic is essentially syntactic, so this division intersects with the morphological classification of languages, but does not coincide with it. 1) Synthetic - with a clear predominance of synthetic forms (Latin, Russian, Czech) 2) Polysynthetic - with a relative balance of synthetic and analytical forms (German, Bulgarian) 3) Analytical - with a predominance of analytical forms (French, English)
Synthetic languages In synthetic languages, grammatical meanings are expressed within the word itself (affixation, internal inflection, stress, suppletivism, i.e., the formation of forms of the same words with a different root), that is, the forms of the words themselves. To express the relationship between words in a sentence, elements of the analytical system (functional words, order of significant words, intonation) can also be used. Morphemes included in a word in synthetic languages can be combined according to the principle of agglutination, fusion, undergo positional alternations (for example, Turkic vowel harmonism, Assimilation of subsequent vowels in the affixes of a word to the preceding vowels to the root of the same word). Since a language, in principle, is not typologically homogeneous, the term "synthetic languages" is applied in practice to languages with a sufficiently high degree of synthesis, for example, German, Russian, Turkic, Finno-Ugric, most of the Semitic-Hamitic, Indo-European (ancient), Mongolian, Tungus- Manchu, some African (Bantu), Caucasian, Paleoasian, American Indian languages.
Analytic languages are those in which grammatical meanings are mostly expressed outside of the word, in the sentence: English, French, and all isolating languages, such as Vietnamese. In these languages, the word is a transmitter of lexical meaning, and grammatical meanings are transmitted separately: by word order in a sentence, functional words, intonation, etc. A typical example illustrating the difference between synthetic and analytical grammatical forms: the phrase in Russian - “father loves son” . If you change the order of words - “the father loves the son”, then the meaning of the phrase will not change, the word “son” and the word “father” change the case ending. The phrase in English is "the father loves the son". When the word order is changed to “the son loves the father”, the meaning of the phrase changes exactly the opposite - “the son loves his father”.
Polysynthetic languages are languages in which all members of a sentence (full incorporation) or some components of a phrase (partial incorporation) are combined into a single whole without formal indicators for each of them. Notable examples of polysynthetic languages are Chukchi-Kamchatka, Eskimo-Aleut, and many North American language families. In the Abkhaz-Adyghe languages, with a very simple noun system, the verb system is polysynthetic.
Agglutinative languages Agglutinative is the morphological type of languages in which new words and word forms are formed by successive addition of unambiguous standard affixes - "prilep". The main features of agglutinative languages are: the relative independence of morphemes; the absence of a multi-variant system of declensions and conjugations, phonetic variation of affixes is allowed according to the law of synharmonism, and in some languages, also according to lobbyization. Examples of languages: Turkic, Finno-Ugric, Dravidian, Indonesian, Tungus-Manchurian, the languages of the peoples of Africa, as well as Japanese and Korean. They are divided according to the location of affixes into postfixal (suffixal) and prefixal. The first variety includes the largest number of languages of the group: Turkic, Finno-Ugric, and others. Prefix agglutination is found, for example, in Swahili, one of the largest languages in Africa. Example: for the Kyrgyz language to express case values, plural values and possessive values, three affixes are used, following one after another in strict sequence and, finally, a case indicator: ata - lar - ymyz - yes - “our fathers”.
Root (isolating, amorphous) languages Root is a morphological type of languages in which a word is equal to a root (or 2-3 roots) and grammatical relations between words in a sentence are expressed analytically (particles, prepositions, word order). Examples of languages: Chinese, Vietnamese, crossed languages - pidgin languages Words in root languages live a more independent life in a sentence than in inflectional or agglutinative languages, and grammatical categories are not expressed brightly, therefore, according to grammatical "technique", such languages are called isolating languages. Example: the properties of amorphousness in the Chinese expression cha wo bu he. All four words are roots. The word cha means “tea”, wo means “I”, bu means “no”, he means “to drink”. All together means "I don't drink tea". Relationships between words in this example are expressed by word order
Incorporating (polysynthetic) languages Incorporating languages are a morphological type in which the boundaries between the word and syntactic units (phrase and sentence) are blurred. An incorporative complex is formed as a compound word, the elements of which perform a syntactic function. According to the method of agglutination, the stems of full-valued words are attached, which are similar in function to the members of the sentence. Example: the Chukchi “You-meyny-levty-pygty-rkyn” can be translated literally as “I-head-strongly-swells”, but in reality it means in Russian “I have a severe headache”. It should be noted that incorporation in such languages as Chukchi, Eskimo is not the only and necessarily present principle of their grammatical organization, but exists against the background of agglutination, therefore, many linguists do not recognize the incorporating type.
Main type Technique Degree of synthesis Example A. Simple purely relational languages 1) Isolating 2) Isolating with agglutination Analytical Chinese, Annam (Vietnamese), Ewe, Tibetan B. Complex purely relational languages 1) Agglutinating, isolating Analytical Polynesian 2) Agglutinating Synthetic Turkish 3 ) Fusion-agglutinating Synthetic Classical Tibetan 4) Symbolic Analytic Shilluk B. Simple mixed-relational languages 1) Agglutinating Synthetic Bantu 2) Fusional Analytical French B. Complex mixed-relational languages 1) Agglutinating Polysynthetic Nootka 2) Fusional Analytical English, Latin, Greek 3) Fusion, symbolic Slightly synthetic Sanskrit 4) Symbolic-fusion Synthetic Semitic. The classification of languages is a very abstract, ideal system, since there are no “pure” languages that would belong to only one morphological type. The classification of languages according to E. Sapir is a confirmation of this fact.
The Russian language as an inflectional language of a synthetic structure Latin and ancient Greek have always been considered as the standard of inflectional languages. Of the living languages, it is Russian (like some other Slavic languages) that is considered as a typical representative of this morphological type. The paradigm of a qualitative adjective includes 101 inflectional forms, and the system of tenses of verbs is also characterized by inflection. But, being a language of a synthetic structure, the Russian language has a certain number of analytical forms of the name and the verb. The verbal forms of the future tense of the imperfective form and the subjunctive mood, the complex degrees of comparison of adjectives are analytical. However, inflections do not disappear here either, forming analytic-synthetic word forms. Example: an ending with the meaning of gender, number and case of the official word “most” - an indicator of the superlative degree of an adjective (the strongest, strongest). Purely analytical forms are rare in Russian. You can also find elements of an isolating type in Russian: adverbs, indeclinable nouns, verb forms denoting instantaneous action: “pryg”, “shmyak”. However, they still differ significantly from words in languages of an isolating type: if a noun in Russian has nothing but a root, a zero ending is implied, then “pryg” and “shmyak” are perceived by native speakers as truncated “jump”, “shmyak”. Thus, the presence in the Russian language of signs of different morphological types does not cancel, but only emphasizes its characterization as a language with pronounced inflection and synthetism.
Conclusion Turning to the morphological classification of languages allows us to see the diversity of the device of the languages of the world. There is no language that would belong to only one of the distinguished types: inflectional, agglutinative, root, or incorporating. In each of the languages that have ever existed, elements of several of the 4 systems are presented, which once again proves the mobility, "liveness" of such a system as language.
The most developed is the morphological typology, which takes into account a number of features. Of these, the most important are: 1) the general degree of complexity of the morphological structure of the word and 2) the types of grammatical morphemes used in a given language, in particular as affixes. Both features actually appear already in the typological constructions of the 19th century, and in modern linguistics they are usually expressed by quantitative indicators, the so-called typological indices. The index method was proposed by the American linguist J. Greenberg, and then improved in the works of scientists from different countries.
The general degree of complexity of the morphological structure of a word can be expressed by the number of morphs per one word form on average. This is the so-called synthetic index, calculated by the formula M / W, where M is the number of morphs in a segment of text in a given language, and W (from the English word) is the number of speech words (word usage) in the same segment.
Of course, for the calculation it is necessary to take natural and more or less typical texts in the corresponding language (usually, texts with a length of at least 100 word usages are taken). The theoretically conceivable lower limit for the synthetic index is 1: with such an index value, the number of morphs is equal to the number of word usages, i.e., each word form is one-morphemic.
In fact, there is not a single language in which each word would always coincide with a morpheme, therefore, with a sufficient length of the text, the value of the synthetic index will always be higher than one. Greenberg obtained the lowest value for Vietnamese: 1.06 (i.e., 106 morphs per 100 words). For English, he got the figure 1.68, for Sanskrit - 2.59, for one of the Eskimo languages - 3.72. For the Russian language, according to the estimates of various authors, figures from 2.33 to 2.45 were obtained.
Languages with an index value below 2 (in addition to Vietnamese and English, Chinese, Persian, Italian, German, Danish, etc.) are called analytical, with an index value from 2 to 3 (in addition to Russian and Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Church Slavonic, Czech , Polish, Yakut, Swahili, etc.) are synthetic and with an index value above 3 (in addition to Eskimo, some other Paleo-Asiatic, Amerindian, and some Caucasian languages) are polysynthetic.
From a qualitative point of view, analytic languages are characterized by a tendency to separate (analytical) expression of lexical and grammatical meanings: lexical meanings are expressed by significant words, most often not containing any grammatical morphemes, and grammatical meanings - mainly by functional words and word order. In a number of analytical languages, tone oppositions are strongly developed. Affixes are used to a small extent, and in some analytical languages, the so-called isolating languages (Vietnamese, Khmer, Old Chinese), they are almost non-existent.
The non-single-morphemic words encountered in these languages are, as a rule, complex (usually two-rooted). Since the significant word here almost never bears in itself any indicators of a syntactic connection with other words in the sentence, it turns out to be, as it were, isolated (whence the name "isolating"). Some linguists, emphasizing the role of word order in isolating languages, call them "positional".
Synthetic languages are qualitatively characterized by a tendency to synthesize, to combine within one word form a lexical (sometimes a number of lexical) and one or more grammatical morphemes. These languages, therefore, use affixes quite extensively.
To an even greater extent, the stringing of a number of affixes in one word is typical of polysynthetic languages. The general designation for both groups is affix languages. All these languages are characterized by a high development of form formation, the presence of richly branched, complex form-building paradigms built as a series of synthetic (sometimes partly analytical) forms. In addition, some polysynthetic languages use incorporation to a greater or lesser extent. On this basis, which characterizes not so much the structure of the word as the structure of syntactic units, such languages are called "incorporating".
Yu.S. Maslov. Introduction to Linguistics - Moscow, 1987
Morphological typology of languages- the most developed area of typological research. Typological linguistics began to develop precisely from the morphological classification of languages, that is, among other areas of typological research, morphological typology is chronologically the first.
In the languages of the world, there are two main groups of ways of expressing grammatical meanings- synthetic and analytical.
For synthetic methods expressions of grammatical meanings are characterized by the connection of a grammatical indicator with the word itself. Such an indicator that introduces the grammatical meaning "inside the word" can be prefix, suffix, ending, internal inflection(alternation of sounds in the root: lie down - lie down - bed), stress change ( ss?ypat - pour), suppletivism (child - children, take - take) (see A.A. Reformatsky, 1997, pp. 263–313). The term "synthetic" is motivated, from the Greek. synthesis- "combination, compilation, association."
For analytical methods characteristic expression of grammatical meaning outside words, separately from it: with the help of prepositions, conjunctions, articles, auxiliary verbs, other auxiliary words; using word order through general intonation statements. Recall that analytical - from the Greek. analysis- "separation, decomposition, dismemberment" - this is a separating, decomposing into its component parts; associated with analysis.
Scientists distinguish the following ways of expressing grammatical meanings:
affixation(attachment to the root of grammatical morphemes - affixes);
internal flexion(significant alternation of phonemes in the root of the word, such as English. sing–song or Russian lie down - lie down);
stress;
intonation;
reduplication(repetition of a root morpheme or a whole word);
official words(prepositions, conjunctions, particles, articles, auxiliary verbs, etc.);
word order.
Sometimes this list is added composition(although this grammatical method does not serve for inflection, but for the formation of new words) and suppletivism- using a different root to convey grammatical meaning, like Russian. man - people, put - put or English. good-better).
In principle, each language uses different grammatical methods from among those named, but in practice they are grouped in a certain way, combined with each other. Namely: in some languages, grammatical meaning is expressed mainly within the (significant) word itself: with the help of affixation, internal inflection, stress. Lexical and grammatical meanings appear here in a complex, jointly forming the semantics of the word. Such languages are called synthetic languages. Examples are ancient Latin, and from modern languages - Finnish, Estonian, Lithuanian, Polish. In other languages, grammatical meaning is expressed outside the significant word: with the help of function words, word order, intonation. In such languages, grammatical and lexical meanings are presented separately, they are embodied in different material means. it analytic languages; these include modern English, French, Danish, Bulgarian, etc.
Many languages combine the features of analyticism and synthetism in their grammatical structure. In particular, modern Russian belongs to the languages mixed order(with some preponderance in the direction of synthetism, although the share of analytical tools in it is steadily increasing); they also include the German language (although elements of analyticism predominate in it), see about this: (B.Yu. Norman, 2004, p. 205).
There are languages in which there are almost no synthetic methods. These are Chinese, Vietnamese, Lao, Thai, Khmer. At the beginning of the XIX century. some linguists have called them amorphous(formless), that is, devoid of form. W. von Humboldt clarified that these languages are not formless, he called them isolating. It was found that these languages are not devoid of grammatical form, but grammatical meanings are expressed in them separately, in isolation from the lexical meaning of the word. The "morphemes" of such languages are extremely isolated from each other, independent, that is, the morpheme is both a root and a separate word. How are words formed in such languages? Do they only contain words like write but no rewrite, nor letter? New words in isolating languages are formed according to a different principle. To form new words, in such languages, you just need to put the roots (words) side by side and you get something in between a compound word and two words. For example, this is how Chinese words are formed from the word write:
rewrite = write + remake, letter = write + subject etc. (on isolating languages, see: N.V. Solntsev, 1985).
On the other hand, there are languages in which the root of the word is so heavily overloaded with various auxiliary and dependent root morphemes that such a word, growing, turns into a sentence in meaning, but at the same time remains shaped like a word. Some words in such languages seem to be introduced into others. At the same time, complex alternations often occur at the junctions of morphemes. Such a word-sentence device is called incorporation(lat . incorporation - inclusion in its composition, from lat. in- in; corpus- the body, a single whole), and the corresponding languages incorporating, or polysynthetic. Polysynthetic languages are Eskimo-Aleut, Chukchi, Koryak, most of the Indian languages of North and Central America.
J. Greenberg even identified language synthesis index.
