Inflected languages and analytical languages

Languages like Latin, Spanish, or German are called inflected languages. The function of the word inside a sentence is shown by inflections and conjugations. And they depend less on the sequence of the words.

Think about this example:

I love him.

What if I say: Love him, I.

Or: Him, I love.

It’s still OK. Because “I” here is the subject in its nominative case and even if we change the sequence of the words, it still serves as the subject and no confusion will be caused in terms of its grammatical function. “Him” here is the object in its accusative case and our varying its positions in a sentence won't change its grammatical function.

This is the main feature of a “inflected” language – every word of it plays a relatively complete grammatical function by itself instead of by the adjacent environment.

What? English is inflected? It WAS, but not anymore. You can still find some residue of inflections in modern English. How about ancient English? The only 3 words I’m familiar with are “Thee, Thou, Thy”.

Thee, “you” is in its accusative case, as in “I kill you.” It’s the object of the sentence.

Thou, “you” is in its nominative case, as in “ You are good.” It’s the subject of the sentence.

Thy, “your” is in its genitive case, as in “your book.” It indicates the possession of the object.

But contemporary English has become much more like an analytical language than a inflected language. On the contrary of inflected languages, analytical languages emphasize on the sequence of the words in a sentence.

Think about another example:

The boy kicks the ball.

How about I switch the sequence as: The ball kicks the boy.

Immediately, you can picture something hilarious.

What’s the difference? In this example, "boy" can be either in its nominative case or accusative case. These two cases are the same for “boy”, as are for “story”. Then the meaning of the sentence is conveyed by the sequence of the words – before the verb or after it.

Do you know which language is the most analytical in our world? Chinese! That’s why it’s so big a headache for LaoWai.

这是我写在我的英语语法笔记上的一段话。不好意思，无论自己的英文如何不地道，我都希望自己用英文来做笔记——所以基本上是写给懂点英语的人看的。同时也是受了最近学习一些屈折语（希腊语、拉丁语）以及教希伯来语的一些启发总结的一点我觉得很有意思的心得。应该说经过这一年多对一门屈折语（希伯来语）的研修和教学，加之最近对印欧语系其他几个古老语种的一点粗浅了解，我对语言学这个东西看出了点意思。

另外值得一记的是，豆瓣同城活动里，有了第二个“希伯来”为关键词的课程——北京人民大学文学院教授雷立柏先生与后浪出版社合作的古希腊语、古希伯来语周末班。在里面做了一年“唯一”之后（去年9月开始希伯来语课招生，唯一一个能够在豆瓣搜到的希伯来语课程），现在成了“唯二”。严格来说，雷先生开课比我早——2014年开始的。不过慕课把他的课发到豆瓣还是这两天的事情。

我很开心跟这位来自奥地利的古典语言老外专家（北京大学哲学系毕业，师从汤一介）一起列在豆列里，我与他一个在南国深圳，一个在祖国的心脏北京。但愿有朝一日，我们能够有把酒言欢的机会。