Edited by David Gil and Antoinette Schapper
[Typological Studies in Language 129] 2020
► pp. 9–96
This chapter poses the question “What does it mean to be an isolating language?” and addresses it by offering a case study of such a language, Riau Indonesian. First, this chapter surveys the debate concerning the viability of the notion of word as a comparative concept, proposes a definition of word as a cut-off point between two distinct levels of structure, morphology and syntax, and then follows with a definition of an isolating language as one lacking a robust structural unit of word. Next, the chapter presents an extensive exploration of wordhood in Riau Indonesian, examining 14 potential sources of evidence for word structure. Overall, the evidence for wordhood is shown to be sparse, thereby justifying the characterisation of Riau Indonesian as an isolating language and at the same time demonstrating what an isolating language may look like.