Syntax deals with the way words are combined; is concerned with the external functions of words and their relationship to other words within the linearly ordered units – word-groups, sentences and texts; studies the way in which the units and their meanings are combined; deals with peculiarities of syntactic units, their “behaviour” in different contexts.
The Purpose of Syntax Linguists and grammarians who study syntax are not necessarily prescriptivists, which means they do not attempt to tell people how to "correctly" form a sentence. They are rather descriptivists, in this case they look at how people actually speak and then create rules that describe what a language community considers grammatical or non-grammatical. Syntax deals with a number of elements, all of which help to facilitate being understood through language. Without rules, there would be no foundation from which to discern meaning from a bunch of words strung together; whereas these rules allow for a virtually infinite number of sentences.
Word Order in Language Construction Every language has rules that dictate where certain types of words can be used in a sentence, and how to interpret the resulting sentence. In English, the basic order is "Subject-Verb-Object; " this means that in a simple sentence, the first noun phrase is the subject, and the subsequent predicate includes the verb phrase and may contain an object.
Word Order in Language Construction This allows English speakers to understand that in the sentence "The boy kicked the ball“, the "boy" is the subject, and therefore the one doing the kicking, whereas the "ball" is the object being kicked. If someone wrote the sentence, "The ball kicked the boy“, the meaning would be reversed somewhat strangely, and "Kicked the ball the boy" would immediately be recognized as a violation of basic syntactical order and read as nonsense.
Kinds of syntactic theories Transformational-Generative Grammar (Zelling Harris Noam Chomsky) The main point of the Transformational-Generative Grammar is that the endless variety of sentences in a language can be reduced to a finite number of kernels (basic constructions) by means of transformations. These kernels serve the basis for generating sentences by means of syntactic processes.
Kinds of syntactic theories The following 6 kernels are commonly associated with the English language: 1) NV – John sings. 2) NVAdj. – John is happy. 3) NVN – John is a man. ( admits no passive transformation ) 4) NVN – John hit the man. 5) NVNN – John gave the man a book. 6) NVPrep. N – The book is on the table.
Kinds of syntactic theories Constructional Syntax (G. Pocheptsov) This analysis deals with the constructional significance/insignificance of a part of the sentence for the whole syntactic unit. The theory is based on the obligatory or optional environment of syntactic elements.
Kinds of syntactic theories Communicative Syntax It is primarily concerned with the analysis of utterances from the point of their communicative value and informative structure. It deals with the actual division of the utterance – theme and rheme analysis.
Kinds of syntactic theories Depending on the contextual informative value any sentence element can act as theme or the rheme: Who is at home? - John is at home. Where is John? – John is at home
Kinds of syntactic theories Pragmatic approach (John Austin - Speech Act Theory) is the study of the way language is used in particular contexts to achieve particular goals. The notion of a speech act presupposes that an utterance can be said with different intentions or purposes and therefore can influence the speaker and situation in different ways
Kinds of syntactic theories Pragmatic approach
Kinds of syntactic theories Textlinguistics studies the text as a syntactic unit, its main features and peculiarities, different ways of its analysis. Discourse analysis focuses on the study of language use with reference to the social and psychological factors that influence communication.
