Flexible languages: definition of the concept

The issue of classifying languages is certainly very complex and capacious. What are inflectional languages, and what kind of languages are they, what kind of languages does it belong to in their native language, these questions do not arise so simply in the everyday situation. The typology of languages is significant for people working in the field of communications and international technology. Every student philologist learns it by heart. Many, probably, would say that this information is not necessary and unnecessary for them, but is it so? Perhaps it is worth knowing about the place of one's native language in the all-round system in order to be aware of its linguistic uniqueness and to understand the historical and cultural value of the words we say every day.

general information

The division of languages exists according to different classifications. By genealogical classification, languages are divided into families, those in turn into groups that also have branches. Famous for almost all the division into language families includes the Indo-European, Caucasian, Chinese-Tibetan, Altaic and many other languages. In turn, the Indo-European family is divided into groups, Slavic, Germanic, Romance, etc. For example, English belongs to the Indo-European family, the German group, the western branch. The Russian language belongs to the Slavic group of Indo-European languages. This classification of languages indicates their relationship. In addition, the languages are divided by other features. There is a morphological and grammatical classification.

Morphological classification of languages.

Of no little importance is the morphological or typological classification of languages, which indicates, as the name suggests, the type of education of the language. According to this classification, there are four types of languages: 1) isolating, or amorphous, 2) incorporating or polysynthetic, 3) inflective, 4) agglutinative. This theme was studied by the greatest linguists of all time. For example, German philologists Augustus and Friedrich Schlegel once came to the conclusion that languages are a synthetic and analytical way of education. Another famous German philologist, Wilhelm von Humbold, perfected the theory, bringing it to the kind in which we have today.

The selective and agglutinative languages are the opposite.

To better understand the essence of these types, they should be disassembled in comparison, since they have opposite properties. Let's start with the word "inflective" and its etymology. The word came from the Latin flectivus "flexible", which implies a flexible structure of languages. FLEXIBLE LANGUAGES are the word formation languages in which one builds by adding to the basis of the word various inflexions with diverse and multitasking meanings. The words agglutinative came from the Latin agglutinatio - "gluing" and implies an unchanging, persistent system.

Agglutinative languages

Agglutinative languages are the word-formation languages in which occurs by adding morphemes with only one meaning, not subject to any change. Agglutinative languages include, for example, Turkic and Finno-Ugric. A vivid example of the languages of this group is Japanese, Bashkir or Tatar. Let's take as an example: the Tatar word " hatlarynd ", which in translation means " in his letters " consists of the data of morphemes: " hut" - "letter", " lar " - morpheme with the plural value, " ын " - morpheme of the third person, "Yes" has the meaning of the local case. That is, each morpheme has only one meaning. Another vivid example from the Bashkir language: the word " bash", which translates as "head", has the meaning of the nominative case, singular. We add to it the morpheme "lar" - " bash-lar" and now it means "head", that is, the morpheme "lar" has a single meaning - the plural.

Languages of inflectional type

Now we will discuss in more detail inflectional languages. As already mentioned above, morphemes in this case have multiple meanings, which we can see on the example of the native Russian language. The adjective " beautiful " has the ending " y ", which points us to the masculine gender, nominative case and plural at the same time. Thus, one morpheme is three values. Let's take another example: the noun " book ", the ending " a " carries the meaning of the feminine gender, singular and nominative. Thus, it can be concluded that the Russian language is inflectional. Other examples of inflectional languages can be German or Latin, as well as most of the known languages of the Indo-European family, in particular, all the languages of the Slavic group. Returning to the German scientists of the 18th century, it is worth noting that the inflectional language, in turn, can be a synthetic or analytical way of education. The synthetic method implies the fact that word formation occurs by adding various morphemes, suffixes and postfixes. The analytical method allows you to use the same service words. For example, in Russian we can say " I write ", using the ending of the future tense, which is a synthetic way of education. Or you can say " I'll write ", using the future service word " I'll be, " which is an example of an analytical method. It is worth noting that there are no clear distinctions in this classification, many languages combine different ways of word formation. An interesting question is whether the English language, today the most studied inflectional or agglutinative?

English is inflective?

To answer this question, you need to conduct a small analysis based on the information obtained above. Take the English verb " sleeps ", which translates " sleeps ", where the ending " s " has the meaning of a third person singular, present tense. One morpheme is of three meanings. Total, English is inflectional. To strengthen the theory, there are a couple of examples: the verb " have Done "with the meaning" made ", where the service word" have "tells us about the plural and perfect time at the same time; « Is Eating "-" eats ", where the official word" is "carries the value of the singular, the third person, the present tense. The abundance of examples with official words in English speaks of a predominantly analytical way of word formation.

Briefly on isolating and polysynthetic languages

The selective and agglutinative languages are the most widely distributed in the world, but nevertheless, there are two more types. Isolating, or amorphous languages are languages, the word-formation in which is characterized by a complete absence of word changes and additions to morphemes. Hence their very name. Such languages include, for example, Chinese. The phrase " cha boo bu " will denote " I do not drink tea ." Incorporating or polysynthetic, perhaps, the most difficult to study and pronouncing languages. Word formation in them occurs by adding words to each other formed by sentences. As, for example, in the Mexican language " ninakakwa" , where " ni " - " I ", " naka " - " I eat ", " kwa " - " meat ".