Syntax
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− | + | In Linguistics, '''syntax''' is "the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages"<ref> Chomsky, Noam. [1957]. Syntactic Structures. p. 11.</ref>. It assumes that: | |
+ | *natural language sentences can be broken down into components (the so-called syntactic constituents); | ||
+ | *the resulting structure (i.e., the relations between syntactic constituents) is hierarchical (a tree-like structure) rather than a simple list; and | ||
+ | *the structure can be predicted by rules (i.e., the structure is regular), which consist the grammar of the language. | ||
+ | For instance, the sentence: | ||
+ | <blockquote>''they killed the man''</blockquote> | ||
+ | is more productively represented as (1) than (2) | ||
+ | {|align=center | ||
+ | |- | ||
+ | |align=center|[[file:syntax.png]] | ||
+ | |width=20%| | ||
+ | |align=center|'''[they][ ][killed][ ][the][ ][man]''' | ||
+ | |- | ||
+ | |align=center|(1) | ||
+ | |width=20%| | ||
+ | |align=center|(2) | ||
+ | |} | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | == Notes == | ||
+ | <references /> |
Revision as of 21:26, 13 August 2013
In Linguistics, syntax is "the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages"[1]. It assumes that:
- natural language sentences can be broken down into components (the so-called syntactic constituents);
- the resulting structure (i.e., the relations between syntactic constituents) is hierarchical (a tree-like structure) rather than a simple list; and
- the structure can be predicted by rules (i.e., the structure is regular), which consist the grammar of the language.
For instance, the sentence:
they killed the man
is more productively represented as (1) than (2)
![]() |
[they][ ][killed][ ][the][ ][man] | |
(1) | (2) |
Notes
- ↑ Chomsky, Noam. [1957]. Syntactic Structures. p. 11.