ANALYTIC

ANALYTIC: A language is analytic if it requires a certain word order to make grammatical sense--often this requires extensive use of prepositions and auxiliary verbs. For instance, take the sentence, "The dog bit the boy." We know in modern English that dog is the subject and boy is the direct object because of word order, the common analytical pattern being subject-verb-object. Examples of analytic languages include French, Spanish, Modern English (but not Old English) and Italian. The opposite type of language uses declensions (special endings stuck on the ends of words) to show what case each word has. This type is called an inflected or synthetic language. Click here for more information about case.