* Reduced Inflection: Modern English has lost most of its inflectional morphology, the system of adding suffixes or prefixes to words to change their grammatical function. For example, verbs no longer change significantly depending on person or tense, relying more on auxiliary verbs (e.g., "I walk," "He walks," "They walked").
* Word Order: Word order is crucial in English to convey meaning. The basic structure of subject-verb-object (SVO) determines the grammatical function of words. This reliance on word order is a hallmark of analytic languages.
* Use of Prepositions: English uses prepositions extensively to express relationships between words, as opposed to using inflectional endings. For example, "on the table" instead of a single inflected form.
* Growing Vocabulary: English continues to adopt loanwords and create new words through compounding and other methods, further simplifying its grammatical structure.
However, there are some traces of synthetic features in Modern English:
* Irregular verbs: Some verbs retain irregular forms (e.g., "go, went, gone"), showing remnants of a more synthetic past.
* Noun plurals: While many nouns form plurals with "-s," some have irregular forms (e.g., "child, children").
* Possessive case: The possessive case uses an apostrophe (e.g., "John's book") which is a kind of inflection.
In conclusion, while Modern English exhibits strong analytic features, it still retains some traces of syntheticity. However, its overall trend is firmly towards an analytic and isolating structure.