analytic (adj.)

A term which characterizes a type of language established by COMPARATIVE LINGUISTICS using STRUCTURAL (as opposed to DIACHRONIC) criteria, and focusing on the characteristics of the WORD: in analytic languages, all the words are invariable (and SYNTACTIC relationships are shown primarily by WORD-ORDER). The term is seen in opposition to SYNTHETIC (and sometimes also POLYSYNTHETIC) languages (which include AGGLUTINATIVE and INFLECTING types), where words typically contain more than one MORPHEME. Several languages of South-East Asia illustrate analyticity in their word structure. As always in such classifications, the categories are not clear-cut: different languages will display the characteristic of analyticity to a greater or lesser degree.

Considerable use is made in SEMANTICS of the sense of ‘analytic’ found in logic and philosophy, where an analytic proposition/sentence is one whose GRAMMATICAL FORM and LEXICAL MEANING make it necessarily true, e.g. Spinsters are unmarried women. The term contrasts with SYNTHETIC, where the truth of the proposition is established using empirical criteria.