Linguistics/Syntax
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[edit] Contents
- Introduction
- The sounds of speech
- Speech sounds go to work
- How we make words
- How words fit together
- How languages got the way they are
- The role of meaning
- How languages differ
- Verbal Behavior
[edit] Introduction
The field of Syntax (or 'grammar') looks at the mental 'rules' that we have for forming sentences and phrases. In English, for instance, it is grammatical to say 'I speak English', but ungrammatical to say 'English speak I' — this is because of a rule which says that subjects normally precede verbs which precede the object.
Many people associate the word 'grammar' with the kind taught in schools years ago, whereby children would 'learn' the rules of right and 'wrong' grammar. This kind of grammar is called Prescriptive Grammar and is generally looked down upon by linguists.
Academic syntacticians often study either the grammar of a particular language (e.g. English Grammar), or study the various theories of a Generative Grammar — a theory which claims there is a universal underlying grammar in our heads, which different languages activate in different ways. The main concern of Generative Grammar is discovering the grammatical rules which apply to all languages, and determining how the manifest differences in world languages can be accounted for.
However, there are many competing theories which do not make — or at least remain neutral on — such a strong claim regarding a universal grammar. They include construction grammar, and cognitive linguistics. One school of thought particularly hostile to the universalist pretensions of generative grammar is the [théorie des opérations enonciatives].
[edit] Basic syntax
Grammar has two major factors: syntax and morphology. Now, syntax is not always the most important thing for a language. One usually simplifies it to the basic components of the Subject, Verb, and Object. English is naturally a SVO language, meaning that the subject of the sentence usually goes first, whereas the verb goes second and the object after that. However, this simplified method doesn't explain things such as German's tendency to send verb infinitives to the end of sentences or such. Some languages have certain rules as to when they use SVO VSO VOS or any other combinations. Spanish and Italian usually have (S)VO, but in cases of object pronouns can have SOV.
Syntax is a more linguistic way of "diagramming" sentences. There are trees that are made of a sentence showing what elements are more important than others.
