An analytic language is a type of natural language in which a series of root/stem words is accompanied by prepositions, postpositions, particles and modifiers, using affixes very rarely. This is opposed to synthetic languages, which synthesize many concepts into a single word, using affixes regularly. Syntactic roles are assigned to words primarily by word order. For example, by changing the individual words in the Latin phrase fēl-is pisc-em cēpit "the cat caught the fish" to fēl-em pisc-is cēpit "the fish caught the cat", the fish becomes the subject, while the cat becomes the object. This transformation is not possible in an analytic language without altering the word order. Typically, analytic languages have a low morpheme-per-word ratio, especially with respect to inflectional morphemes. No natural language, however, is purely analytic or purely synthetic.
Modern Hebrew is more analytic than Classical Hebrew mostly with nouns.[1] Classical Hebrew relies heavily on inflectional morphology to convey grammatical relationships, while in Modern Hebrew, there has been a significant reduction of the use of inflectional morphology.
Isolating language
A related concept is that of isolating languages, which are those with a low morpheme-per-word ratio (taking into account derivational morphemes as well). Purely isolating languages are by definition analytic and lack inflectional morphemes. However, the reverse is not necessarily true, and a language can have derivational morphemes but lack inflectional morphemes. For example, Mandarin Chinese has many compound words,[2] which gives it a moderately high ratio of morphemes per word, but since it has almost no inflectional affixes at all to convey grammatical relationships, it is a very analytic language.
English is not totally analytic in its nouns since it uses inflections for number (e.g., "one day, three days; one boy, four boys") and possession ("The boy's ball" vis-à-vis "The boy has a ball"). Mandarin Chinese, by contrast, has no inflections on its nouns: compare 一天yī tiān 'one day', 三天sān tiān 'three days' (literally 'three day'); 一個男孩yī ge nánhái 'one boy' (lit. 'one [entity of] male child'), 四個男孩sì ge nánhái 'four boys' (lit. 'four [entity of] male child'). Furthermore English is considered to be weakly inflected and comparatively more analytic than most other Indo-European languages.
Persian could be considered an analytic language. Generally, there are no inflections as we know it. There is a system of prefixes and suffixes that connect the words to express possession or attribute a quality. They could be integrated in the word in writing while they keep their function. For example, the suffix هاhâ makes the words plural like English s: دختر ها آمدندdokhtar hâ âmadand 'The girls came'. Persian has no agreement of a noun's or adjective's number or gender in many other languages because it is inherently a genderless language. Practically, there are no inflections for numbers keeping the above example; یک روزyek rooz 'one day', سه روزse rooz 'three days' (literally 'three day'), یک پسرyek pesar 'one boy' (lit. 'One boy'), چهار پسرčahâr pesar 'four boys' (lit. 'Four boy'). Similarly, there are no inflections for possession as well. A short '-e' sound (a diacritical mark) ـِ-e is added after a word starting with a consonants letter to show that it is possessed by (or belongs to) the next word so 'The boy's ball' would be توپِ پسرtoop -e pesar. However, the diacritical mark 'ـِ' is put under the last letter of the first word for beginners and in written literature and everyday publications. It is otherwise usually omitted but pronounced in reading. For words ending with long vowels, the letter ی is added with a short '-e' sound written as یِ as a suffix. Thus, 'The boy's foot' would be پا یِ پسرpa -ye pesar. However, in literature and daily writing, the letter is omitted although it is pronounced in reading. The same system is used to connect adjectives and nouns to words.
