Syntax
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<blockquote>''they killed the man with a gun''</blockquote> | <blockquote>''they killed the man with a gun''</blockquote> | ||
is more productively represented as (1a) or (1b) than (2) | is more productively represented as (1a) or (1b) than (2) | ||
− | {|align=center cellpadding= | + | {|align=center cellpadding=50 cellspacing=10 |
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|align=center|[[file:syntax.jpg]] | |align=center|[[file:syntax.jpg]] | ||
− | |align=center|'''[the][ ][ | + | |align=center|'''[they][ ][killed][ ][the][ ][man][ ][with][ ][a][ ][gun]''' |
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|align=center|(1) | |align=center|(1) |
Revision as of 20:24, 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 with a gun
is more productively represented as (1a) or (1b) than (2)
File:Syntax.jpg | [they][ ][killed][ ][the][ ][man][ ][with][ ][a][ ][gun] |
(1) | (2) |
Notes
- ↑ Chomsky, Noam. [1957]. Syntactic Structures. p. 11.