syntax

What is syntax?

Before, i have posted about morphology. Now we will concentrate on the structure and ordering of components within a sentence, we are studying  the syntax of a language. The word “syntax” comes originally from Greek and literally means “a putting together” or “arrangement”.  So syntax is the study how combine to form sentences. But this is together with inflectional morphology, belongs to what is in traditional terminology  the 'grammar of a language'. 

Grammar and inflectional morphology

The term 'grammar' covers the proper use of words and word-forms as well as the grammatical structure of phrases, clauses, and sentences. While different word-forms of lexemes are created by the adding of inflectional morphemes, combinations of words into more complex units are the domain of syntax proper. 

Sentence structure

Sentences are not simply chains of words, but have an internal, mostly hierarchical structure. This grammatical hierarchycan be illustrated by the following list of the categories used for the analysis of sentence structure:

      1.      sentences contain one or several

      2.      clauses contain one or several

      3.      phrases contain one or several

      4.      words from different word classes

      v  Word Classes & Phrases

Word classes and phrases are very closely linked. First of all, a phrase is named after the word class that acts as head of the phrase. A head is a word upon which everything in a phrase is centered. In a phrase such as full of hope, for instance, all parts of the phrase are associated with the adjective full. Therefore, this construction is called an adjective phrase. Likewise, in the phrase might have mattered, everything is associated with the lexical verb mattered, making this a verb phrase.

To describe both word classes and phrases, the discussion in this section will focus on two of the more important phrase types – noun phrases and verb phrases.

1.      Noun phrases

All noun phrases (NPs) are centered on either a head noun or pronoun. One key characteristic of nouns is that most exhibit number: they have a singular or plural form.

2.      The verb phrase

    the basic structure of the auxiliary verb.

3.      Verbal phrase

   Verbal phrases are to be distinguished from verb phrase. These include participle, gerunds and infinitives. A verbal phrase therefore is a verb phrase without tense and modals. 

          v  Clauses & Sencentes

While words and morphemes have meaning, it is only phrases that can have reference. A clause, then, consists of a referring expression and a predication, which is why only clauses carry information about something The referring expression is always a noun phrase (NP), while the predication is a verb phrase (VP). Accordingly, a complete English sentence, such as the following example sentence, will always contain these components. 

Example:

[The duck]= NP [left the pool]= VP

Clause and sentence can be used synonymously when dealing with simple sentences, a simple sentence contains a single independent clause. By contrast, compound sentences contain multiple clauses that are linked by way of coordinating conjunctions or parataxis. Complex sentences consist of a main clause and at least one subordinate clause.

Example:

The duck left the pool.  = simple sentence

The duck left the pool, but the penguin stayed behind. = compound sentence

The duck left the pool although the penguin stayed behind. = complex sentence