isolated opposition opposition isolating language (also analytic language, root-isolating language)

Classificational category established by Schlegel (1818) and Humboldt (1836) which refers to languages that do not use morphological means (i.e. inflection) to express syntactic relations, but rather independent grammatical units (particles, words) and/or word order. Isolating languages contrast with synthetic languages, which make use of inflection and other morphological means to express syntactic relations. Examples of isolating languages include Classical Chinese and Vietnamese.