Syntax: Difference between revisions

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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=10 cellspacing=10
{|align=center cellpadding=50 cellspacing=10
|-
|-
|align=center|[[file:syntax.jpg]]
|align=center|[[file:syntax.jpg]]
|align=center|'''[the][ ][dog][ ][ate][ ][the][ ][bone]'''
|align=center|'''[they][ ][killed][ ][the][ ][man][ ][with][ ][a][ ][gun]'''
|-
|-
|align=center|(1)
|align=center|(1)

Revision as of 18:24, 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

  1. Chomsky, Noam. [1957]. Syntactic Structures. p. 11.