refers to the predominant types of linking meaningful units within a word or sentence structure
Analytical technique comprises:
fixed word order
use of auxiliary verbs
juxtaposition
Analytic languages
show a low ratio of morphemes to words; in fact, the correspondence is nearly one-to-one
sentences in analytic languages are composed of independent root morphemes
grammatical relations between words are expressed by separate words where they might otherwise be expressed by affixes, which are present to a minimal degree in such languages
there is little to no morphological change in words: they tend to be uninflected
grammatical categories are indicated by word order
individual words carry a general meaning (root concept)
context and syntax are more important than morphology
Synthetic technique is associated with:
formal concord
government
Synthetic languages
form words by affixing a given number of dependent morphemes to a root morpheme
the morphemes may be distinguishable from the root, or they may not
the morphemes may be fused with the root or among themselves (in that multiple pieces of grammatical information may potentially be packed into one morpheme)
word order is less important for these languages than it is for analytic languages, since individual words express the grammatical relations that would otherwise be indicated by syntax
there tends to be a high degree of agreement, or cross-reference between different parts of the sentence
morphology is more important than syntax
A considerable growth of the significance of syntax manifests itself in the following tendencies:
Ø Gradual change in the nature of parts of speech;
Ø Strengthening of form words;
Ø Extensive growth of analytical constructions;
Ø Predominance of syntactic methods of linking words in a sentence;
Ø The share of the grammatical function of word order in English.