SYNTAX

SYNTAX

                                                                                  

            The structure of sentences, as well as the study of such structure, is called syntax. In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences in natural languages. All languages have ways of reffering to entities – to people,places, things, ideas,events, so on. Reffering expressions are noun phrases.

            All languages also have ways of saying something about entities they make reference to. In other words, all languages can make pedications about the things reffered to by the reffering expressions.

DEFINITION OF SYNTAX

Syntax is a central component of human language. Language has often been characterized as a systematic correlation between certain types of gestures and meaning. It is not the case that every possible meaning that can be expressed is correlated with a unique, unanalyzable gesture, be it oral or manual. Rather, each language has stock of meaning-bearing elements and different ways of combining them to express different meaning, and these ways of combining them are themselves meaningful.(Robert and Valin, 2001).

 Syntax can thus be given the following characterization, taken from Matthews (1982:1) the term ‘syntax’ is from the Ancient Greek syntaxis, a verbal noun which literally means ‘arrangement’ or ‘setting out together’. Traditionally, it refers to the branch of grammar dealing with the ways in which words, with or without appropriate inflections, are arranged to show connections of meaning within the sentence. Similar to the explanation of Matthew, Robert and Van Valin (2001) expresses the essence of itself as the following syntax: “First and foremost, syntax deals with how sentences are constructed, and users of human language employ a striking variety of possible arrangements of the element in sentences”.

Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis.   (Chomsky, 2002)

                 Syntax is that part of our linguistics knowledge which concerns the structure of sentences. Knowing a language also means being able to put words together to form sentences to express our thoughts. (Fromkin and Rodman,1983)

                 From the experts’ explanation above ,syntax is the study of internal structure of sentences.

SENTENCE TYPES

• Simple Sentences

            A simple sentence has the form of a single clause that stands alone as its own sentences. A clause contains a single verb (or predicate).

• Compound Sentences

            In a compound sentence (sometimes callaed ‘coordinate’), two or more clauses are joined by a coordinator in a coordinate relationship.

·         Complex Sentences

            A complex sentence combines two (or more) clauses in such a way that one clause functions as a grammatical part of the other one.

• Subordinate clauses
• Subordinators
• The form of subordinate clauses

MAJOR CONSTITUENTS OF SENTENCES :

      Nouns

All English noun can be identified by using the three test frames, as follows:

v  Frame A

The concert was good

Man

Woman

Film

Theatre

Play

  v  Frame B

The clerk remembered the tax

Worker       Book

Teacher       Secret

Student      Ball

Boy            Toy

Girl             Secret

  v  Frame C

The team went there

Players

Students

Teachers

Group

      In frame A, only singular nouns can be identified. To identify plural nouns, we have to use were instead of was. Some examples are given below:

The films are/were good

        Plays

            Concerts

            Dramas

            Etc.

    There are still many nouns that cannot be identified with this frame. There are many nouns in English that are not preceded by the article, including proper nouns and pronouns. We have to adjust the frame by putting by the article between brackets indicating that it is optional which means that it may or may not occur in the frame.

                        b.      Verbs

                  To identify all verbs in English, we can also use the three test frames.

                  Frame A

                           1       2

(The) ---------- is/was  good

---------- s are/were

                                    Seems/seemed

                                     Seem

                                    Sounds/sounded

                                    Sound

          All words that can occupy the position of is/was or are/were in the frame are verbs. These verbs are often called linking verbs or equative verbs. Its number is very limited. A list of linking verb is given in the following: feel, taste, smell, look, grow, become, seem, appear, remain, stay, sound, and be.

Frame B

1                         2    1

(The) --------- remembered (the) ----------

----------s                  ----------s

                                 Paid

                                 Sent

                                 Received

                                 Collected

                                 Rejected

All word that can occupy the position of remembered in the frame are verbs, namely, verbs which require objects. These verbs are called transitive verbs and its number is rather large.

Frame C

                           1   2

(The) -------- went there

                                Arrived

                                Stayed

                                Worked

                                Came

                                Lived

       All word that can occupy the position of went in the frame are verbs. These verbs belong to the so-called intransitive verbs, namely, verbs which do not require objects.

Rules For Rewriting Noun Phrases

We can now characterize and exemplify certain types of NP:

Noun (N) : Karen, spoons, justice, swimming

Determiner (DET) + Noun: that spoon, a judge, some gnomes

Determiner + Adjective (ADJ) + Noun: an old farmer, her aged instructor, the flying saucer

Determiner + Adjective + Noun + Prepositional Phrase (PP) : the oldest weather of the year, the first woman on the moon, that loud clap of thunder

One way of representing these various NP patterns is by the use of phrase-structure rules (also called rewrite rules) like the following :

1. NP →   N                                (NP consists of N)
2. NP →  DET N                       (NP consists of DET +N)
3. NP →  DET ADJ N               (NP consists of DET +ADJ + N)
4. NP →  DET ADJ N PP         (NP consists of DET +ADJ +N +PP)

            English does indeed  permit NPs that consist of ADJ and N, as in extraterrestrial life and great imaginatuion, as ewl as NPs consisting of DET and N and PP, as in those dishes on the table, the whake on the beach, and a cloud in the sky.

• Prepositional Phrase

            The notation PP stands for prepositional phrase, examples of which include in the car, from Ethiopia, in the attic, to his brither, with the earring and bythe judge. Because every PP consists of a prepositional (PREP0 and a noun phrase (NP), the phrase-structure rule for PP is this :

PP          PREP NP

SURFACE STRUCTURE AND DEEP STRUCTURES

The level that is represented by the linear string of morphemes and words as uttered or written is called a surface structure. The other level of structure is an abstract level underlying the surface structure. Structure at this level are called deep structures or underlying structure.

TRANSFORMATIONS

ü Subject-auxiliary Inversion

And wh-movement Transformations

In this section we explore two movement transformation, both of which are involved in forming interrogatives; we will then note the implications of these transformations for the underlying structure of every English sentence.

• Closed Interogatives

Two principal kinds of interrogatives exist in English : ‘closed’ (used to ask questions for which there is a closed set of answers) and ‘open’ (used to ask questions for which there is an open-ended set of answers). Example :

Jhon was winning the race when he stumbled.

Was Jhon winning the race when he stumbled ?

• Open Interrogatives

Open interrogative contain a wh-word (who, why, where, which, what, or how), which represents the information that is sought. Example :

(She was looking for Sigmund Freud today.)

Sha was looking for who today ?

ü  Relative Clause Transformation

            A relative clause is formed when one clause is embedded into an NP of another clause to produce structures like the following (relative clauses are underlined) :

The Academic Board dismissed [the lecturer who failed me].

TYPES OF TRANSFORMATIONS

• Constraints on Transformations

            One question that continues to challenge grammarians is whether and to what extent limitations exist on the kinds of transformational rules that operate in human language. We can illustrate the kinds of constraints that may exist by analyzing constraints on movement transformations.

• Coordinated NP Constraint

            In each of the two sets sentences below, the first example is a declarative, the second the corresponding open interrogative, the third a declarative in which the wh-word represents one of two coordinated noun phrases, and the fourth the ill-formed structure that would result if thewh-word were moved to the front of its clause.

• Relative Clause Constraint

            Extraction of wh-word from relative clauses is also blocked in English, as the sentences below indicate. As above, the first sentences in eavh set is a declarative containing an indefinite pronoun (hee something) corresponding to the wh-word in the interrogative. As you can see, when the wh-word is extracted from a relative clause (onclosed in brackets), an ung

CONCLUSION

            Based on the explanation about the experts, i concluded that syntax is Syntax is a branch of linguistics that is concerned with the study of the structure of a sentence and ordering of its elements. The word syntax itself derives from Greek words meaning ‘together’ or ‘arrangement’, but also the modern syntactic tradition and investigations have their roots in the findings of ancient Greeks.

            One of such ‘traditional’ tasks of linguists dealing with syntax was to describe the organization of the parts of a sentence, however, with the development of this branch of linguistics, and especially in contemporary inquiries the scope of interest has widened.

REFERENCES

Azar, Betty Schrampfer. 1993. Fundamental of English Grammar second edition. Jakarta :            Binurupa Aksara

Chomsky, N. (1957 & 2002). Syntactic Structures. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmBH.

Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman, Nina Hyams. (2007). An introduction to Language. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth.

Robert, D. and Van Valin,J.R. (2001). An Introdution to Linguistic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.