Polysynthetic Languages: Popularity, Characteristics, and Challenges
The article begins with a known issue in language typology, where the categorization of polysynthetic, fusional, agglutinative, and analytic languages is often misunderstood and misapplied. Letrsquo;s begin by clarifying the real paradigms: languages are primarily classified into analytic and synthetic.
Morphological Continuum
The morphological continuum ranges from extremely analytic to extremely synthetic. Isolating languages are the most extreme form of analytic while polysynthetic languages are the most extreme form of synthetic. Synthetic languages can be further divided into agglutinative and fusional, based on how many grammatical categories are encoded in a single morph or suffix.
Illustrations of Morphology
Finnish is a good example of a language that shows both tendencies. While agglutinative words like "in our houses" (taloissamme) are found, the word "taloissamme" is not truly agglutinative due to the fused suffix "-mme" encoding three meanings. Similarly, Estonian has evolved to have more fusion, as in the word "mis" which can be analyzed as m- is, meaning "which, that" (in a particular context).
However, there is no strict definition for polysynthesis, which generally refers to languages featuring very high numbers of morphemes and polypersonal agreement, where verbs agree with multiple actors in the sentence. Languages like Turkish and Hungarian, despite having many morphemes per word, are not considered polysynthetic, and neither are languages like Basque and Swahili, which have polypersonal agreement.
Popularity and Distribution of Polysynthetic Languages
Commonly, the claim that polysynthetic languages are not popular is based on the number of native speakers. While it is true that Standard European languages like English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese have massive followings and official status, more than 80% of the world's languages are minority languages.
Interestingly, the Americas were home to over 2000 languages before European colonization, and polysynthetic languages are prevalent in that region. Southern Quechua and Guaraní survived European discovery, with over 6 million speakers each. Thus, while the popularity in terms of Native speakers may be lower, the actual numbers highlight the significant presence of polysynthetic languages.
Impact of European Colonization
The dramatic decline in the number of speakers of polysynthetic languages is largely due to the atrocities of European colonization. The arrival of European settlers led to widespread colonization, plunder, murder, kidnap, rape, oppression, and the spread of diseases, which drastically reduced the number of speakers of these languages. However, their sheer number of speakers post-colonialism is impressive and demonstrates their enduring influence.
Concluding Thoughts
The question of why polysynthetic languages are less popular in terms of speakers can be traced back to historical and socio-political factors. While they are less dominant in the global linguistic landscape, they remain significant in specific regions and continue to play a crucial role in the cultural and linguistic identity of communities.