Introduction:
Syntax means “sentence construction”. That is, how words group together to make
phrases and sentences. Some people tend to use the term “Grammar” to mean the
same as syntax, although most linguists follow the more recent practice whereby
the grammar of a language includes all of its organizing principles:
information about the sound system, about the form of words, how we adjust
language according to context, and so on; syntax is only one part of this
grammar.
1. What is Syntax?
According
to Hana (2011), Syntax comes from the Greek word “syntaxis” from syn (together) + taxis
(arrangement). Syntax – the part of linguistics that studies sentence structure
including:
a. Word order:
- e.g, I want these books.
b. Agreement: subject and verb,
determiner and noun, . . . often must agree:
- e.g, He wants this book.
- e.g, I want these books.
c. How many complements, which
prepositions and forms (cases):
- e.g, I give Mary a book.
- e.g, I see her.
d. Hierarchical structure – what
modifies what
- e.g, We need more (intelligent leaders). (more of intelligent leaders)
- e.g, We need (more intelligent) leaders. (leaders that are more intelligent)
Syntax is not about meaning!
Sentences can have no sense and still be grammatically correct:
- e.g. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. – nonsense, but grammatically correct
This
sentence was composed by Noam Chomsky in 1957 as an example of a sentence whose
grammar is correct but whose meaning is nonsensical.
2. Sentences and phrases
Since
Syntax is the study of sentence structure , it is necessary to distinguish
between “sentence” and “phrase”. Sentences are composed not directly out of
words but of constituents which may consist of more than one word, called
phrases. A phrase is an expression which is a constituent in a sentence and is
the expansion of a head (i.e. key word)., For example in (a), the constituent
the king, or the constituents my brother and an expensive car in (b) are Noun
Phrases, abbreviated as NPs, because their key elements are the nouns (Ns)
king, brother and car, respectively (Varga, 2010).
a. The king laughed.
b. My brother bought an expensive car.
Note that a
phrase can be realised by a single word or a pronoun. For instance the NPs
John, Mary and apples in (c) consist of the Ns “John”, “Mary” and “apples”, and
“nothing else”. In (d) “he” is a special NP because its head is a pronoun
rather than a noun.
c. John gave Mary apples.
d. He went home.
3. Sentences and clauses:
The terms
sentence and clause can be used synonymously. A sentence or clause is an
expression which minimally contains a subject and a predicate, and which may
also contain other types of elements. For instance,
- Example (a):
It consists
of just a subject and a predicate. The NP “the king” is the subject, and the
Verb Phrase (VP) which is composed of a single verb (V) “laughed,” is the
predicate.
4. Complements
According
to Verga, “A complement is a constituent whose presence is structurally
“dictated” (required or licensed) by a particular word. The presence of the
complement “follows” from the presence of the word which it is a complement of”
(Varga, 2010). Consider the previously mentioned examples:
- Example (b):
The NP my
brother is the subject, the V bought is the predicate, and the NP an expensive
car is a complement (direct object, of the verb “bought”).
- Example (c):
The subject
is the NP “John”, the predicate is the V “gave”, and there are two complements,
the NP “Mary”, functioning as an indirect object, and the NP “apples”
functioning as a direct object.
- Example (d):
The
complement of the V “went” is the Adverb Phrase (AdvP) “home”, consisting of the
single adverb (Adv) “home”.
5. Adjuncts
The
sentence or clause may also contain constituents which are not structurally
required by the verb but add optional information about place, time, manner,
purpose, etc. Those constituents are known as adjuncts.
6. Grammatical functions Vs syntactic categories
The terms
subject, predicate, object (direct and indirect), adverbial, attribute;
complement and adjunct refer to grammatical functions which constituents may
perform in the sentence. The terms such as NP, VP, AP, AdvP, PP, N, V, A, Adv,
P, etc. refer to syntactic categories, they name the grammatical category to
which the constituent belongs (Varga, 2010).
7. Representation
Sentences
consist of structural units larger than lexical categories, these sentence
constituents are called phrases. The constituent structure of sentences can be
represented in two ways: tree diagrams, and bracketings.
a. Tree diagram:
One of the
most common ways to create a visual representation of syntactic structure is
through tree diagrams Yule (2010). Yele added that a set of the symbols can be
used to label parts of the tree as a try to capture the hierarchical
organization of those parts in the underlying structure of phrases and
sentences. The following figures are examples of a tree diagram:
b. Bracketings
Labeled
bracketing is a way of representing the structure of an expression by writing
square brackets ('[' and ']') to the left and right hand side of its component
parts, i.e. words or constituents. The brackets carry subscripts, so-called
labels, which state the category of the unit in question. 1) and 2) are exaples
of Labeled bracketing:
1) [S[NP[Det My][N friend]] [VP[V ran]
[Adv home]]].
2) [S[NP[D My][N brother]] [VP [VP[V
bought][NP[D an][AP[A expensive]] [N car]]] [PP[P on][NP[N Tuesday]]]]].
Although the two ways of
representation are logically equivalent, we prefer tree diagrams because they
help visualise structure better than bracketings do. Tree diagrams are like
uprooted trees, with branches and nodes. The nodes in a tree diagram are the
topmost point, the bottom points, and all those intermediate points at which
the tree branches. The labels are the abbreviated names of the categories to
which the constituents belong (Varga, 2010).
8. Deep structure and surface structure
Deep
structure and surface structure concepts are used in linguistics, specifically
in the study of syntax in the Chomskyan tradition of transformational
generative grammar.
Surface structure can be defined as
the syntactic form they take as actual sentences. In the other words, it is
forms of sentences resulted from
modification/ transformation. Consider these sentences:
(1) You close the door.
(2) The door is closed by you.
(3) Close the door!
Deep structure is defined as an
abstract level of structural organization in which all the elements determining
structural interpretation are represented. Deep structure is what you wish to
express and surface structure how you express it in with the help of words and
sentence.
9. Structural ambiguity
Structural
or syntactic ambiguity is the potential of multiple interpretations for a piece
of written or spoken language because of the way words or phrases are
organized. It means that two distinct underlying interpretations that have to
be represented differently in deep structure. One of the classic examples is:
- e.g : The chicken is ready to eat”
1st
interpretation: a live chicken is hungry.
2nd
interpretation: a prepared chicken is ready to serve for dinner.
References:
Yule, George.
(2010). The study of language . Cambridge, UK ; Cambridge University Press.
László,
Varga. (2010). Introduction to English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University.
Jirka Hana
(2011). Introduction to Linguistics – Syntax 1
- You may download the lecture with pdf format using the following link:
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