A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics David Crystal

472 synthesis
examples: syntactical these days sounds quaint. See also autonomous (3), blend,
frame, taxis.
synthesis (n.)
see speech synthesis
synthetic (adj.) (1) A term which characterizes a type of language sometimes
distinguished in comparative linguistics using structural (as opposed to
diachronic) criteria, and focusing on the characteristics of the word: in synthetic
languages, words typically contain more than one morpheme (as opposed
to analytic languages, where words are typically monomorphemic). Two types
of synthetic language are usually recognized: agglutinative and inflecting
– with polysynthetic sometimes additionally distinguished. Examples include
Latin, Greek, Arabic, Turkish. As always in such classifications, the categories
are not clear-cut: different languages will display the characteristic of ‘synthesis’
to a greater or lesser degree.
(2) Some use is made in semantics of the sense of ‘synthetic’ found in logic and
philosophy, where a synthetic proposition/sentence is one whose truth can be
verified only by using empirical criteria, e.g. It’s raining, Those dogs are fierce.
The term contrasts with analytic, where the internal form of the proposition
makes it necessarily true, without reference to external criteria.
system (n.) In its most general sense, the term refers to a network of patterned
relationships constituting the organization of language. Language as a whole is
then characterized as a system (cf. the ‘linguistic system of English’, etc.) – and
often as a hierarchically ordered arrangement of systems. In one view, the
‘language system’ is constituted by the phonological, grammatical and semantic
systems; the phonological system comprises the segmental and suprasegmental
systems; the segmental system comprises the vowel and consonant
systems; and so on.
Within this totality, the term ‘system’ may be applied to any finite set of formally
or semantically connected units (referred to variously as the ‘terms’ or
‘members’ of the system), where the interrelationships are mutually exclusive
(i.e. two members of the same system cannot co-occur) and mutually defining
(i.e. the meaning of one member is specifiable only with reference to others). For
example, the set of personal pronouns in a language constitutes a system,
according to these criteria. First, it is finite (in English, basic forms are I, you,
he, she, it, we, they); the system is ‘closed’, in the sense that new members
are not normally created. Second, it is not possible to use more than one at a
given place in a structure (cf. *I you came, etc.). Third, it is easier to define
a member by referring to the other members of the system, rather than independently;
e.g. I is ‘the pronoun which is not you/he/she/it/we/they’. Other
‘grammatical systems’ would include determiner/tense/mood/prepositional/
negation, etc. The term would not normally be applied to open-class items,
such as nouns, adjectives, sentences, etc., unless it meant the set of formal
grammatical relationships subsumed under that heading, e.g. the ‘noun system’
would mean the set of syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships which
define the class of nouns. The analysis is also applicable in principle to the
study of meanings, and the term ‘semantic system’ is often used; but in the
present state of knowledge it is often difficult to model the interrelationship