isolating (adj.)

A term which characterizes a type of LANGUAGE established by COMPARATIVE LINGUISTICS using STRUCTURAL (as opposed to DIACHRONIC) criteria, and focusing on the characteristics of the WORD: in isolating languages, all the words are invariable (and SYNTACTIC relationships are primarily shown by WORD-ORDER). Vietnamese, Chinese and many South-East Asian languages are often cited as good instances of isolating languages. As always with such general classifications, the CATEGORIES are not clear-cut: different languages will display the characteristics of isolation to a greater or lesser degree. An alternative term is ANALYTIC, seen as opposed to SYNTHETIC types of language (AGGLUTINATIVE and INFLECTING), where words contain more than one MORPHEME.