Synthetic language

• 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.

The distinction is, therefore, a matter of degree. The most analytic languages, isolating languages, consistently have one morpheme per word, while at the other extreme, in polysynthetic languages such as some Native American languages a single inflected verb may contain as much information as an entire English sentence.

In order to demonstrate the nature of the isolating-analytic–synthetic–polysynthetic classification as a "continuum", some examples are shown below.

• Mandarin Chinese lacks Inflection almost entirely, and most words consist of either one- or two-syllable morphemes, especially due to the very numerous compound words.

However, with rare exceptions, each syllable in Mandarin (corresponding to a single written character) represents a morpheme with an identifiable meaning, even if many of such morphemes are Bound morpheme. This gives rise to the common misconception that Chinese consists exclusively of "words of one syllable". As the sentence above illustrates, however, even simple Chinese words such as míngtiān 'tomorrow' ( míng "next" + tīan "day") and péngyou 'friend' (a compound of péng and yǒu, both of which mean 'friend') are synthetic compound words.

The Chinese language of the classic works (of Confucius for example) and southern dialects to a certain extent is more strictly monosyllabic: each character represents one word. The evolution of modern Mandarin Chinese was accompanied by a reduction in the total number of phonemes. Words which previously were phonetically distinct became homophones. Many disyllabic words in modern Mandarin are the result of joining two related words (such as péngyou, literally "friend-friend") in order to resolve the phonetic ambiguity. A similar process is observed in some English dialects. For instance, in the Southern dialects of American English, it is not unusual for the short vowel sounds and to be indistinguishable before nasal consonants: thus the words "pen" and "pin" are (see pin-pen merger). In these dialects, the ambiguity is often resolved by using the compounds "ink-pen" and "stick-pin", in order to clarify which "p*n" is being discussed.

• English language:
• "He travelled by hovercraft on the sea" is largely isolating, but travelled (although it is possible to say "did travel" instead) and hovercraft each have two morphemes per word, the former being an example of relational synthesis (inflection), and the latter of compounding synthesis (a special case of derivation with another free morpheme instead of a bound one).

• Japanese:
• 私たちにとって、この泣く子供の写真は見せられがたいものです。 means strictly literally, 'To us, these photos of a child crying are things that are difficult to be shown', meaning "We cannot bear being shown these photos of a child crying" in more idiomatic English. In the example, most words have more than one morpheme and some have up to five.
• Hebrew language:
• . this sentence means "Yesterday I told my friends about the idea I was thinking about". From this example we can see that Hebrew verbs are conjugated by tense/mood and person (including gender and number). In addition, there are prepositions that are also conjugated, but by person, like and . More at: Modern Hebrew grammar.

• Bulgarian:
• Селото, селото, пустото селото откак заселено. . this sentence means "That village, that particular village, that village has always been empty ever since it was settled". From this example we can see that Bulgarian nouns are inflected by definiteness, gender, number. Bulgarian verbs are conjugated by tense, mood, person, gender, number, and evidential marking. Bulgarian is a fusional inflecting language with some analyticity (including prepositions in the nominal morphology, and some analytical-synthetic tenses in the verbal morphology).

The definite articles are not only suffixes but are also noun inflections expressing thought in a synthetic manner.

• Finnish language:
• Käyttäytyessään tottelemattomasti oppilas saa jälki-istuntoa
• "Should they behave in an insubordinate manner, the student will get detention."
• Structurally: behaviour (present/future tense) (of their) obey (without) (in the manner/style) studying (they who (should be)) gets detention (some). Practically every word is derived and/or inflected. However, this is quite formal language, and (especially in speech) would have various words replaced by more analytic structures: Kun oppilas käyttäytyy tottelemattomasti, hän saa jälki-istuntoa meaning 'When the student behaves in an insubordinate manner, they will get detention'.
• Georgian:
• გადმოგვახტუნებინებდნენო gadmogvakht'unebinebdneno ( gadmo-gv-a-kht'un-eb-in-eb-d-nen-o)
• "They said that they would be forced by them (the others) to make someone to jump over in this direction".
• The word describes the whole sentence that incorporates tense, subject, direct and indirect objects, their plurality, relation between them, direction of the action, conditional and causative markers, etc.
• Classical Arabic:
• أو أعطيناكموه عبثًا؟ ()
• "Or had we given it unto you (plural, masculine) futilely ?" in Arabic, each word consists of one root that has a basic meaning (  'give' and  'futile'). Prefixes and suffixes are added to make the word incorporate subject, direct and indirect objects, number, gender, definiteness, etc.

It has been argued that analytic grammatical structures are easier for adults learning a foreign language. Consequently, a larger proportion of non-native speakers learning a language over the course of its historical development may lead to a simpler morphology, as the preferences of adult learners get passed on to second generation native speakers. This is especially noticeable in the grammar of . A 2010 paper in PLOS ONE suggests that evidence for this hypothesis can be seen in correlations between morphological complexity and factors such as the number of speakers of a language, geographic spread, and the degree of inter-linguistic contact.

According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann, Modern Hebrew (which he calls "Israeli") "is much more analytic, both with nouns and verbs", compared with Classical Hebrew (which he calls "Hebrew").See pp. 65-67 in Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad (2020), , Oxford University Press. /

• Analytic language
• Bound morpheme
• Isolating language
• Linguistic typology
• Morphological derivation
• Morphology (linguistics)

• SIL: What is a morphological process?
• SIL: What is derivation?
• SIL: Comparison of inflection and derivation
• Lexicon of Linguistics: Inflection, Derivation
• Lexicon of Linguistics: Base, Stem, Root
•  , chapter 4 of Halvor Eifring & Rolf Theil: Linguistics for Students of Asian and African Languages