linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingui ...

, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as

phrase In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can co ...

s and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order,

grammatical relations In linguistics, grammatical relations (also called grammatical functions, grammatical roles, or syntactic functions) are functional relationships between constituents in a clause. The standard examples of grammatical functions from traditional gra ...

, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency),

agreement Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus, a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of law ** Meeting of ...

, the nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning ( semantics). There are numerous approaches to syntax that differ in their central assumptions and goals.

Etymology

The word ''syntax'' comes from

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic ...

roots: "coordination", which consists of ''syn'', "together", and ''táxis'', "ordering".

Topics

The field of syntax contains a number of various topics that a syntactic theory is often designed to handle. The relation between the topics is treated differently in different theories, and some of them may not be considered to be distinct but instead to be derived from one another (i.e. word order can be seen as the result of movement rules derived from grammatical relations).

Sequencing of subject, verb, and object

One basic description of a language's syntax is the sequence in which the subject (S), verb (V), and object (O) usually appear in sentences. Over 85% of languages usually place the subject first, either in the sequence SVO or the sequence SOV. The other possible sequences are VSO, VOS, OVS, and OSV, the last three of which are rare. In most generative theories of syntax, the surface differences arise from a more complex clausal phrase structure, and each order may be compatible with multiple derivations. However, word order can also reflect the semantics or function of the ordered elements.

Grammatical relations

Another description of a language considers the set of possible grammatical relations in a language or in general and how they behave in relation to one another in the

morphosyntactic alignment In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the grammatical relationship between arguments—specifically, between the two arguments (in English, subject and object) of transitive verbs like ''the dog chased the cat'', and the single argument of ...

of the language. The description of grammatical relations can also reflect transitivity,

passivization A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing t ...

, and head-dependent-marking or other agreement. Languages have different criteria for grammatical relations. For example, subjecthood criteria may have implications for how the subject is referred to from a relative clause or coreferential with an element in an infinite clause.

Constituency

Constituency is the feature of being a constituent and how words can work together to form a constituent (or ''phrase''). Constituents are often moved as units, and the constituent can be the domain of agreement. Some languages allow discontinuous phrases in which words belonging to the same constituent are not immediately adjacent but are broken up by other constituents. Constituents may be recursive, as they may consist of other constituents, potentially of the same type.

Early history

The ''

Aṣṭādhyāyī The (Devanagari अष्टाध्यायी) is a grammar that describes a form of an early Indo-Aryan language: Sanskrit. Authored by Sanskrit philologist and scholar Pāṇini and dated to around 500 BCE, it describes the language as cu ...

'' of

Pāṇini , era = ;;6th–5th century BCE , region = Indian philosophy , main_interests = Grammar, linguistics , notable_works = ' ( Classical Sanskrit) , influenced= , notable_ideas= Descriptive linguistics (Devanag ...

, from c. 4th century BC in Ancient India, is often cited as an example of a premodern work that approaches the sophistication of a modern syntactic theory since works on grammar had been written long before modern syntax came about. In the West, the school of thought that came to be known as "traditional grammar" began with the work of Dionysius Thrax. For centuries, a framework known as , first expounded in 1660 by Antoine Arnauld in a book of the same title, dominated work in syntax: as its basic premise the assumption that language is a direct reflection of thought processes and so there is a single most natural way to express a thought. However, in the 19th century, with the development of

historical-comparative linguistics Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # ...

, linguists began to realize the sheer diversity of human language and to question fundamental assumptions about the relationship between language and logic. It became apparent that there was no such thing as the most natural way to express a thought and so

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premi ...

could no longer be relied upon as a basis for studying the structure of language. The Port-Royal grammar modeled the study of syntax upon that of logic. (Indeed, large parts of Port-Royal Logic were copied or adapted from the ''Grammaire générale''.) Syntactic categories were identified with logical ones, and all sentences were analyzed in terms of "subject – copula – predicate". Initially, that view was adopted even by the early comparative linguists such as

Franz Bopp Franz Bopp (; 14 September 1791 – 23 October 1867) was a German linguist known for extensive and pioneering comparative work on Indo-European languages. Early life Bopp was born in Mainz, but the political disarray in the Republic of Ma ...

. The central role of syntax within

theoretical linguistics Theoretical linguistics is a term in linguistics which, like the related term general linguistics, can be understood in different ways. Both can be taken as a reference to theory of language, or the branch of linguistics which inquires into the ...

became clear only in the 20th century, which could reasonably be called the "century of syntactic theory" as far as linguistics is concerned. (For a detailed and critical survey of the history of syntax in the last two centuries, see the monumental work by Giorgio Graffi (2001).)

Theories

There are a number of theoretical approaches to the discipline of syntax. One school of thought, founded in the works of Derek Bickerton, sees syntax as a branch of biology, since it conceives of syntax as the study of linguistic knowledge as embodied in the human mind. Other linguists (e.g., Gerald Gazdar) take a more Platonistic view since they regard syntax to be the study of an abstract

formal system A formal system is an abstract structure used for inferring theorems from axioms according to a set of rules. These rules, which are used for carrying out the inference of theorems from axioms, are the logical calculus of the formal system. A for ...

. Yet others (e.g., Joseph Greenberg) consider syntax a taxonomical device to reach broad generalizations across languages. Syntacticians have attempted to explain the causes of word-order variation within individual languages and cross-linguistically. Much of such work has been done within the framework of generative grammar, which holds that syntax depends on a genetic endowment common to the human species. In that framework and in others,

linguistic typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

and universals have been primary explicanda. Alternative explanations, such as those by functional linguists, have been sought in

language processing Language processing refers to the way humans use words to communicate ideas and feelings, and how such communications are processed and understood. Language processing is considered to be a uniquely human ability that is not produced with the sa ...

. It is suggested that the brain finds it easier to parse syntactic patterns that are either right- or left- branching but not mixed. The most-widely held approach is the performance–grammar correspondence hypothesis by John A. Hawkins, who suggests that language is a non-innate adaptation to innate

cognitive Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, though ...

mechanisms. Cross-linguistic tendencies are considered as being based on language users' preference for grammars that are organized efficiently and on their avoidance of word orderings that cause processing difficulty. Some languages, however, exhibit regular inefficient patterning such as the VO languages

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

, with the

adpositional phrase An adpositional phrase, in linguistics, is a syntactic category that includes ''prepositional phrases'', ''postpositional phrases'', and ''circumpositional phrases''. Adpositional phrases contain an adposition (preposition, postposition, or circ ...

before the verb, and Finnish, which has postpositions, but there are few other profoundly exceptional languages. More recently, it is suggested that the left- versus right-branching patterns are cross-linguistically related only to the place of role-marking connectives (

adpositions Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

and subordinators), which links the phenomena with the semantic mapping of sentences.

Theoretical syntactic models

Dependency grammar

Dependency grammar Dependency grammar (DG) is a class of modern grammatical theories that are all based on the dependency relation (as opposed to the ''constituency relation'' of phrase structure) and that can be traced back primarily to the work of Lucien Tesni� ...

is an approach to sentence structure in which syntactic units are arranged according to the dependency relation, as opposed to the constituency relation of

phrase structure grammar The term phrase structure grammar was originally introduced by Noam Chomsky as the term for grammar studied previously by Emil Post and Axel Thue ( Post canonical systems). Some authors, however, reserve the term for more restricted grammars in ...

s. Dependencies are directed links between words. The (finite) verb is seen as the root of all clause structure and all the other words in the clause are either directly or indirectly dependent on the root. Some prominent dependency-based theories of syntax are the following: * Recursive categorical syntax, or algebraic syntax * Functional generative description * Meaning–text theory * Operator grammar * Word grammar

Lucien Tesnière Lucien Tesnière (; May 13, 1893 – December 6, 1954) was a prominent and influential French linguist. He was born in Mont-Saint-Aignan on May 13, 1893. As a maître de conférences (senior lecturer) in University of Strasbourg (1924), and ...

(1893–1954) is widely seen as the father of modern dependency-based theories of syntax and grammar. He argued vehemently against the binary division of the clause into subject and predicate that is associated with the grammars of his day (S → NP VP) and remains at the core of most phrase structure grammars. In the place of that division, he positioned the verb as the root of all clause structure.

Categorial grammar

Categorial grammar Categorial grammar is a family of formalisms in natural language syntax that share the central assumption that syntactic constituents combine as functions and arguments. Categorial grammar posits a close relationship between the syntax and seman ...

is an approach in which constituents combine as

function Function or functionality may refer to: Computing * Function key, a type of key on computer keyboards * Function model, a structured representation of processes in a system * Function object or functor or functionoid, a concept of object-orient ...

and argument, according to combinatory possibilities specified in their

syntactic categories A syntactic category is a syntactic unit that theories of syntax assume. Word classes, largely corresponding to traditional parts of speech (e.g. noun, verb, preposition, etc.), are syntactic categories. In phrase structure grammars, the ''phrasal ...

. For example, other approaches might posit a rule that combines a noun phrase (NP) and a verb phrase (VP), but CG would posit a syntactic category ''NP'' and another ''NP\S'', read as "a category that searches to the left (indicated by \) for an NP (the element on the left) and outputs a sentence (the element on the right)." Thus, the syntactic category for an intransitive verb is a complex formula representing the fact that the verb acts as a

function word In linguistics, function words (also called functors) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. ...

requiring an NP as an input and produces a sentence level structure as an output. The complex category is notated as (NP\S) instead of V. The category of transitive verb is defined as an element that requires two NPs (its subject and its direct object) to form a sentence. That is notated as (NP/(NP\S)), which means, "A category that searches to the right (indicated by /) for an NP (the object) and generates a function (equivalent to the VP) which is (NP\S), which in turn represents a function that searches to the left for an NP and produces a sentence." Tree-adjoining grammar is a categorial grammar that adds in partial

tree structure A tree structure, tree diagram, or tree model is a way of representing the hierarchical nature of a structure in a graphical form. It is named a "tree structure" because the classic representation resembles a tree, although the chart is general ...

s to the categories.

Stochastic/probabilistic grammars/network theories

Theoretical approaches to syntax that are based upon

probability theory Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set ...

are known as stochastic grammars. One common implementation of such an approach makes use of a neural network or

connectionism Connectionism refers to both an approach in the field of cognitive science that hopes to explain mental phenomena using artificial neural networks (ANN) and to a wide range of techniques and algorithms using ANNs in the context of artificial int ...

Functional grammars

Functionalist models of grammar study the form–function interaction by performing a structural and a functional analysis. * Functional discourse grammar (Dik) * Prague linguistic circle *

Role and reference grammar Role and reference grammar (RRG) is a model of grammar developed by William A. Foley and Robert Van Valin, Jr. in the 1980s, which incorporates many of the points of view of current functional grammar theories. In RRG, the description of a sent ...

(RRG) *

Systemic functional grammar Systemic functional grammar (SFG) is a form of grammatical description originated by Michael Halliday. It is part of a social semiotic approach to language called '' systemic functional linguistics''. In these two terms, ''systemic'' refers to ...

Generative syntax

Generative syntax is the study of syntax within the overarching framework of generative grammar. Generative theories of syntax typically propose analyses of grammatical patterns using formal tools such as

s augmented with additional operations such as

syntactic movement Syntactic movement is the means by which some theories of syntax address discontinuities. Movement was first postulated by structuralist linguists who expressed it in terms of ''discontinuous constituents'' or ''displacement''. Some constituen ...

. Their goal in analyzing a particular language is to specify rules which generate all and only the expressions which are well-formed in that language. In doing so, they seek to identify innate domain-specific principles of linguistic cognition, in line with the wider goals of the generative enterprise. Generative syntax is among the approaches that adopt the principle of the autonomy of syntax by assuming that meaning and communicative intent is determined by the syntax, rather than the other way around. Generative syntax was proposed in the late 1950s by Noam Chomsky, building on earlier work by

Zellig Harris Zellig Sabbettai Harris (; October 23, 1909 – May 22, 1992) was an influential American linguist, mathematical syntactician, and methodologist of science. Originally a Semiticist, he is best known for his work in structural linguistics and di ...

Louis Hjelmslev Louis Trolle Hjelmslev (; 3 October 189930 May 1965) was a Danish linguist whose ideas formed the basis of the Copenhagen School of linguistics. Born into an academic family (his father was the mathematician Johannes Hjelmslev), Hjelmslev studied ...

, and others. Since then, numerous theories have been proposed under its umbrella: * Transformational grammar (TG) (Original theory of generative syntax laid out by Chomsky in ''Syntactic Structures'' in 1957) *

Government and binding theory A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is ...

(GB) (revised theory in the tradition of TG developed mainly by Chomsky in the 1970s and 1980s) *

Minimalist program In linguistics, the minimalist program is a major line of inquiry that has been developing inside generative grammar since the early 1990s, starting with a 1993 paper by Noam Chomsky. Following Imre Lakatos's distinction, Chomsky presents minima ...

(MP) (a reworking of the theory out of the GB framework published by Chomsky in 1995) Other theories that find their origin in the generative paradigm are: *

Arc pair grammar In linguistics, arc pair grammar (APG) is a theory of syntax that aims to formalize and expand upon relational grammar. It primarily builds upon the relational grammar concept of an arc, but also makes use of more formally stated ideas from model th ...

* Generalized phrase structure grammar (GPSG) *

Generative semantics Generative semantics was a research program in theoretical linguistics which held that syntactic structures are computed on the basis of meanings rather than the other way around. Generative semantics developed out of transformational generati ...

Head-driven phrase structure grammar Head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) is a highly lexicalized, constraint-based grammar developed by Carl Pollard and Ivan Sag. It is a type of phrase structure grammar, as opposed to a dependency grammar, and it is the immediate successor to ...

(HPSG) * Lexical functional grammar (LFG) * Nanosyntax *

Relational grammar In linguistics, relational grammar (RG) is a syntactic theory which argues that primitive grammatical relations provide the ideal means to state syntactic rules in universal terms. Relational grammar began as an alternative to transformational g ...

(RG) * Harmonic grammar (HG)

Cognitive and usage-based grammars

The Cognitive Linguistics framework stems from generative grammar but adheres to

evolutionary Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

, rather than Chomskyan, linguistics. Cognitive models often recognise the generative assumption that the object belongs to the verb phrase. Cognitive frameworks include the following: *

Cognitive grammar Cognitive grammar is a cognitive approach to language developed by Ronald Langacker, which hypothesizes that grammar, semantics, and lexicon exist on a continuum instead of as separate processes altogether. This approach to language was one of th ...

* Construction grammar (CxG) * Emergent grammar

References

Citations

Sources

* * * * * An interdisciplinary essay on the interplay between logic and linguistics on syntactic theories. *

External links

The syntax of natural language: An online introduction using the Trees program
eatrice Santorini & Anthony Kroch,

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universiti ...

, 2007 {{Authority control Grammar Language Branches of linguistics Philosophy of language Semiotics +