"Uninflected" redirects here. For the use in grammar, see Uninflected word.
Not to be confused with Language isolate.
Language with a very low morpheme per word ratio
Linguistic typology
Morphological
Analytic
Isolating
Synthetic
Fusional
Agglutinative
Polysynthetic
Oligosynthetic
Morphosyntactic
Alignment
Nominative–accusative
Marked nominative
Ergative–absolutive
Split ergative
Symmetrical voice
Active–stative
Tripartite
Nominative–absolutive
Direct-inverse
Ditransitive/Monotransitive
Secundative
Indirective
Zero-marking
Dependent-marking
Double-marking
Head-marking
Null-subject
Syntactic pivot
Theta role
Word order
VO languages
Subject–verb–object
Verb–subject–object
Verb–object–subject
OV languages
Subject–object–verb
Object–subject–verb
Object–verb–subject
V1 word order
V2 word order
OS word order
Free word order
Time–manner–place
Place–manner–time
Lexicon
Color terms
Numerals
v
t
e
An isolating language is a type of language with a morpheme per word ratio close to one, and with no inflectional morphology whatsoever. In the extreme case, each word contains a single morpheme. Examples of widely spoken isolating languages are Yoruba[1] in West Africa and Vietnamese[2][3] (especially its colloquial register) in Southeast Asia.
A closely related concept is that of an analytic language, which uses unbound morphemes or syntactical constructions to indicate grammatical relationships. Isolating and analytic languages tend to overlap in linguistic scholarship.[2]
Isolating languages contrast with synthetic languages, also called inflectional languages, where words often consist of multiple morphemes.[4] That linguistic classification is subdivided into the classifications fusional, agglutinative, and polysynthetic, which are based on how the morphemes are combined.[5]
^"A Computerized Identification System for Verb Sorting and Arrangement in a Natural Language: Case Study of the Nigerian Yoruba Language" (PDF). eajournals.org. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
^ ab"Analytic language". Encyclopedia Britannica. 20 July 1998.
^"Isolating Language". Glossary of Linguistic Terms. 3 December 2015. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
^Whaley, Lindsay J. (1997). "Chapter 7: Morphemes". Introduction to Typology: The Unity and Diversity of Language. SAGE Publications, Inc. ISBN 9780803959620.
^"Lecture No. 13". bucknell.edu. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
and 29 Related for: Isolating language information
rather than isolating. Some isolatinglanguages include: Classical Chinese Vietnamese Yoruba Khmer language Thai language Central Flores languages Analytic...
A languageisolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with another language. Basque in Europe, Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa...
of isolatinglanguages, which are those with a low morpheme-per-word ratio (taking into account derivational morphemes as well). Purely isolating languages...
analytic language. The word order is subject–verb–object, although the subject is often omitted. Additionally, Thai is an isolatinglanguage lacking any...
Like the other Gbe languages, Fon is an isolatinglanguage with a SVO basic word order. In Benin, French is the official language, and Fon and other indigenous...
still displays features of the Middle Khmer language. Khmer is primarily an analytic, isolatinglanguage. There are no inflections, conjugations or case...
traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ; lit. 'Han language' or 中文; Zhōngwén; 'Chinese writing') is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese...
auxiliary language – Constructed language meant to facilitate communication Glottolog#Language families Languageisolate#List of languageisolates by continent...
most analytic languages, isolatinglanguages, consistently have one morpheme per word, while at the other extreme, in polysynthetic languages such as some...
trisyllabic roots do occur but they are less common. Yoruba is a highly isolatinglanguage. Its basic constituent order is subject–verb–object, as in ó nà Adé...
result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and phonemically distinctive tones, through processes of tonogenesis...
bàθà]) is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Myanmar, where it is the official language, lingua franca, and the native language of the Bamar, the country's...
an agglutinative language? SIL: What is a fusional language? SIL: What is an isolatinglanguage? SIL: What is a polysynthetic language? Lexicon of Linguistics:...
creole language most of whose vocabulary, but not grammar, is drawn from English. As is generally the case with creole languages, it is an isolating language...
isolated system, a system without any external exchange Isolatinglanguage, a type of language with a low morpheme-per-word ratio Isolation (microbiology)...
Arunachal languages are various languages in Arunachal Pradesh, India traditionally classified as Sino-Tibetan languages, but that may be languageisolates and...
synthetic languages to fusional synthetic languages, and then to non-synthetic languages, which in their turn evolve into isolatinglanguages and from...
ev-ler-i-n-i-z-de-n. Agglutinative languages are often contrasted with isolatinglanguages, in which words are monomorphemic, and fusional languages, in which words can...
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that...
apparently a language isolate. The Jalabe (as descendants of speakers of the language are called) speak the Bwilim dialect of the Dikaka language. It is possible...
have more than one syllable, unlike isolatinglanguages such as Vietnamese. Ticuna is an unusually tonal language for South America, with over 10 mostly...
the verb -gwá "tell" is /-ɡʷá/. Igbo is an isolatinglanguage that exhibits very little fusion. The language is predominantly suffixing in a hierarchical...
minor language families and isolates.: 283 According to the People's Linguistic Survey of India, India has the second highest number of languages (780)...
France has one official language, the French language. The French government does not regulate the choice of language in publications by individuals,...
speakers. Goemai is a predominantly isolatinglanguage with the subject–verb–object constituent order. The language is considered threatened, which means...
morphemes can appear in isolation. Whereas isolatinglanguages have a low morpheme-to-word ratio, polysynthetic languages have a very high ratio. There is no...
called isolating, or analytic, because there is almost a full correspondence between a single word and a single aspect of meaning. Most languages have words...
and they may also be affected by the mother language of non-native speakers. Sango is an isolatinglanguage with subject–verb–object word order, as in...
Global Information