Re: isolation vs inflection & other features

Ebera sekalge:
---
The young me asked : is an isolating language better than an inflected
one?
The present-days me answers :
Not at all. The two are one. Syntax is always marked.
In an inflected language, cases are marked by an affix.
In an isolating language, cases are marked by a preposition.
---
They aren't the same. In Sturnan, I have sentence grasai (modifiers that
affect whole sentences). They come first in the sentence. The inflecting
way to do this would be marking the verb (since one affecting the subject
or object would not always have something to modify). I don't like that.
It doesn't work the same.

You would make entire sentences to be prepositional phrases. That never
happens.

---
As I know, case-marking applies to all human languages, at least on
Earth. The only exception is lojban
---
Case is often marked by word order alone. For instance, English's normal
accusative is invisible.

---
For the ease : what would make the learning of 10 affixes harder than
the learning of 10 prepositions?
---
Previous lingual experience. Not many languages (Eurolangs, at least)
still have case systems.

---
As you see, many (most?) prepositions of natlangs are unnecessary. In
a conlang, you don't need to implement more prepositions for an
isolating language than you would implement affixes for an inflected
one.
---
It is true that one adposition can represent more than one meaning. Your
example was a cumbersome one, though.
Almost all (even highly) inflecting languages have prepositions. A
monster of inflection might have twenty or thirty cases. The Antienglish
would have no more than a hundred or so.

---
<skipping agglutination stuff>
---
In my understanding, agglutination is the use of modular affixes. You can
stack several affixes on the same word. Inflection would be using single
affixes to give the same meaning.
Dictionary.com's definition of agglutination is "The formation of words
from morphemes that retain their original forms and meanings with little
change during the combination process." If this definition differs from
mine and is true, agglutination is a useless form of inflection, or else
a method of deriving words. *shakes head incredulously*

My language would be in category G (isolating / inflecting).

Reply