What is Syntax?

The

rules that govern the structure of utterances; also called grammar The basic organization of sentences is around syntax
build

sentences around syntactic constituents; not word meaning nonsensical sentences & non-grammatical sentences

colorless green ideas sleep furiously -vsrun boy the quickly to dog home the

More Proof
Nonsensical

words/lexical gaps

Twas brilig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves and the mome raths outgrabe.
The

grammatical constituency is clear even if you don't know what the word means

Two Levels of Structure

surface
final

structure

result of the grammar

deep

structure

underlying

structure, based upon grammatical categories and constructed by syntactic rules

Most prescriptive grammars only deal with surface structure concerns. Why?

They address how we write, not how we speak. Also most deal with style concerns, ie effective language use, rather than true grammatical rules

Transformational Generative Grammar

Generative
rules

Grammar

that allow us to create any sentence

Transformational
uses

Grammar

shortcuts to change surface structures telling us how we should construct sentences, but trying to explain how we create sentences

Descriptive
not

Levels of Constituency
Wordsmallest
N,

unit in syntax

V, Adj, Adv, Det, Pro, Prep, Comp, Conj

Phraseconsists

of word level

constituents
Consists

of a head and compliments NP, VP, PP, AP, CP

Sentenceconsists

of Aux, Phrases, and a few function word constituents

What is an Auxiliary?
Aux

is the head of a sentence AuxTense (modal) (have +en) (be +ing)

Tense

Past or Non-Past Modalcan, do, will, may, etc The +en and the +ing attach themselves to the main verb have +en eg. have written be +ing eg. is writing

Properties of Syntactic Rules

Grammaticalmeet

with native speakers linguistic competence Open-endedallow for endless productivity in language Synonymyallow to express idea in more than one way Ambiguityallow a sentence to have more than one meaning

A Few Notes About the Rules

Simplified

rules Hierarchical: follow L to R Parenthesizes mark optional components An arrow [] means consists of A superscript n [ n ] means this component can be repeated More than one rule means more than one choice