Information about Oligosynthetic

Linguistic typology
Morphological
Analytic
Synthetic
Fusional
Agglutinative
Polysynthetic
Oligosynthetic
Morphosyntactic
Alignment
Accusative
Ergative
Philippine
Active-stative
Tripartite
Inverse marking
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
Time Manner Place
Place Manner Time
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An oligosynthetic language (from the Greek ὀλίγος, meaning "few" or "little") is any language using very few morphemes, perhaps only a few hundred, which combine synthetically to form statements. It is contrasted to polysynthetic languages. Oligosynthesis is almost entirely theoretical and would depend heavily on the creation of lengthy compound words, to an extent far exceeding that of regular synthetic languages.

There are no known natural human languages that are oligosynthetic. The Native American languages Nahuatl and Blackfoot have in the past been claimed to exhibit oligosynthetic qualities (most notably by Benjamin Whorf). However, the linguistic community has largely rejected these claims, preferring to categorize Nahuatl and Blackfoot as polysynthetic.

Because no natural language has been shown to exhibit oligosynthetic properties, some linguists regard true oligosynthesis as impossible or impractical for productive use by humans.

Oligosynthetic constructed languages

Some constructed languages (conlangs), for example Sona, Socialese, aUI, Ygyde, Kali-sise, and Vuyamu, may be considered oligosynthetic.

Unlike oligosynthetic languages, oligoanalytic or oligoisolating languages are ones which have few morphemes but tend toward isolating structure. For example, the conlang Toki Pona has been described as oligoisolating.[1]

The Newspeak spoken by Oceania in the novel 1984 tends theoretically to be an oligosynthetic language, as the aim is to reduce the morphemes. Newspeak ideas are expressed using those few roots and constructing a new idea by synthesis; for example, doubleplusungood means "extremely unsatisfactory".

See also

Linguistic Typology is an international peer-reviewed journal in the field of linguistic typology, founded in 1997. It is published by Mouton de Gruyter on behalf of the Association for Linguistic Typology. Its editor-in-chief is Prof. Frans Plank (University of Konstanz).
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Morphological typology is a way of classifying the languages of the world (see linguistic typology) that groups languages according to their common morphological structures.
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Please [improve the article] or discuss this issue on the talk page. This article has been tagged since April 2007.
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A synthetic language, in linguistic typology, is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio. This linguistic classification is largely independent of morpheme-usage classifications (such as fusional, agglutinative, etc.
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fusional language (also called inflecting language) is a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to "squish together" many morphemes in a way which can be difficult to segment.
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An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view.
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Polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes.

Definition

The degree of synthesis refers to the morpheme-to-word ratio. Languages with more than one morpheme per word are synthetic.
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In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs and those of intransitive verbs. The distinction can be made morphologically (through grammatical case or verbal agreement), syntactically (through word
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A nominative-accusative language (or simply accusative language) is one that marks the direct object of transitive verbs distinguishing them from the subject of both transitive and intransitive verbs.
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An ergative-absolutive language (or simply ergative) is one that treats the agent of transitive verbs distinctly from the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs.

Ergative vs.


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Austronesian alignment, commonly known as the Philippine- or Austronesian-type voice system, is a typologically unusual morphosyntactic alignment that combines features of ergative and accusative languages.
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An active-stative language, or active language for short, is one in which the sole argument of an intransitive verb is sometimes marked in the same way as the agent of a transitive verb (that is, like a subject in English), and sometimes in the same way as the direct object
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A tripartite language, also called an ergative-accusative language, is one that treats the subject of an intransitive verb, the subject of a transitive verb, and the object of a transitive verb each in different ways.
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A direct-inverse language is a language where clauses with transitive verbs can be expressed either using a direct or an inverse construction. The direct construction is used when the subject of the transitive clause outranks the object in saliency or animacy but the
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The syntactic pivot is the verb argument around which sentences "revolve", in a given language. This usually means the following:
  • If the verb has more than zero arguments, then one argument is the syntactic pivot.

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theta role or θ-role is the formal device for representing syntactic argument structure (the number and type of noun phrases) required syntactically by a particular verb. For example, the verb put requires three arguments (i.e., it is ditransitive).
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In linguistic typology, word order is the order in which words appear in sentences. In many languages, changes in word order occur due to topicalization or in questions.
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In linguistics, a VO language is a language in which the verb typically comes before the object (thus including SVO, VOS and VSO languages). It was W.P. Lehmann who first proposed to reduce the six possible permutations of word order to just two main ones, VO and OV, in
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In linguistic typology, subject-verb-object (SVO), is a sentence structure where the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third. Languages may be classified according to the dominant sequence of these elements.
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Verb Subject Object (VSO) is a term in linguistic typology. It represents one type of languages when classifying languages according to the sequence of these constituents in neutral expressions: Ate Sam oranges.
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In linguistic typology, Verb Object Subject or Verb Object Agent - commonly used in its abbreviated form VOS or VOA - represents the language-classification type in which the following sequence of the three constituents, in neutral expressions, is
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In linguistics, an OV language is a language in which the object comes before the verb. They are primarily left-branching, or head-final, i.e. heads are often found at the end of their phrases, with a resulting tendency to have the adjectives before nouns, to place
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In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear or usually appear in that order. If English were SOV, then "Sam oranges ate" would be an ordinary sentence.
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Object Subject Verb (OSV) or Object Agent Verb (OAV) is one of the permutations of expression used in Linguistic typology. OSV or OAV denotes the sequence "Object Subject Verb" in neutral expressions: Oranges Sam ate.
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Object Verb Subject (OVS) or Object Verb Agent (OVA) is one of the permutations of expression used in linguistic typology. OVS denotes the sequence 'Object Verb Subject' in unmarked expressions: Oranges ate Sam, Thorns have roses.
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Time Manner Place (TMP) describes one possible ordering of adpositional phrases in sentences.
  • Example: ... yesterday, by car, to the store.


Linguistic typology has observed that TMP order is common among Subject Object Verb (SOV) languages.
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Place Manner Time is a term used in linguistic typology to state the general order of adpositional phrases in a language's sentences: "to the store by car yesterday". It would seem that it is common among SVO languages. English, French, and Spanish belong to this category.
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Writing system: Greek alphabet 
Official status
Official language of:  Greece
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recognised as minority language in parts of:
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Regulated by:
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A language is a system of symbols and the rules used to manipulate them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon.
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In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes (the smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound), and in written language morphemes are composed of graphemes (the
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