In linguistics, syntax (from Ancient Greek "arrangement" from ''syn'', "together", and ''táxis'', "an ordering") is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages.
In addition to referring to the overarching discipline, the term ''syntax'' is also used to refer directly to the rules and principles that govern the sentence structure of any individual language, as in "the syntax of Modern Irish."
Modern research in syntax attempts to describe languages in terms of such rules. Many professionals in this discipline attempt to find general rules that apply to all natural languages.
The term ''syntax'' is also used to refer to the rules governing the behavior of mathematical systems, such as formal languages used in logic. See Syntax (logic); Computer-programming languages; Syntax (programming languages).
Though there has been an interplay in the development of the modern theoretical frameworks for the syntax of formal languages and natural languages, this article surveys only the latter.
For centuries, work in syntax was dominated by a framework known as , first expounded in 1660 by Antoine Arnauld in a book of the same title. This system took as its basic premise the assumption that language is a direct reflection of thought processes and therefore there is a single, most natural way to express a thought. That way, coincidentally, was exactly the way it was expressed in French.
However, in the 19th century, with the development of historical-comparative linguistics, 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 therefore logic 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 the 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, this view was adopted even by the early comparative linguists such as Franz Bopp.
The central role of syntax within theoretical linguistics 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 Graffi (2001).
Among the many generative theories of linguistics, the Chomskyan theories are: Transformational Grammar (TG) (Original theory of generative syntax laid out by Chomsky in ''Syntactic Structures'' in 1957) Government and binding theory (GB) (revised theory in the tradition of TG developed mainly by Chomsky in the 1970s and 1980s) Minimalist program (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:
Tree-adjoining grammar is a categorial grammar that adds in partial tree structures to the categories.
Some dependency-based theories of syntax:
Category:Grammar Category:Semiotics * Category:Greek loanwords Category:Philosophy of language
af:Sinsbou als:Syntax ar:علم النحو an:Sintaxi az:Sintaksis bn:বাক্যতত্ত্ব be:Сінтаксіс мовы be-x-old:Сынтаксіс br:Kevreadurezh bg:Синтаксис ca:Sintaxi cs:Syntax cy:Cystrawen da:Syntaks de:Syntax et:Süntaks el:Σύνταξη (γλωσσολογία) es:Sintaxis eo:Sintakso eu:Sintaxi fa:نحو hif:Syntax fr:Syntaxe fy:Sinlear gv:Co-ordrail gl:Sintaxe ko:통사론 hsb:Syntaksa hr:Sintaksa io:Sintaxo id:Sintaksis ia:Syntaxe is:Setningafræði it:Sintassi he:תחביר kk:Синтаксис sw:Sintaksi la:Syntaxis lv:Sintakse lt:Sintaksė li:Syntaxis jbo:genlalske lmo:Sintassi hu:Szintaxis mk:Синтакса (граматика) mr:वाक्यरचना nl:Syntaxis (taalkunde) ja:統語論 no:Syntaks nn:Syntaks nov:Sintaxe koi:Синтаксис pl:Syntaktyka (językoznawstwo) pt:Sintaxe ro:Sintaxă rm:Sintaxa ru:Синтаксис simple:Syntax sk:Syntax (jazykoveda) cu:Сѷнтаѯь sl:Skladnja sr:Синтакса sh:Sintaksa fi:Syntaksi sv:Syntax tl:Palaugnayan ta:சொற்றொடரியல் tt:Синтаксис th:วากยสัมพันธ์ tr:Söz dizimi uk:Синтаксис vi:Cú pháp học wa:Adjinçaedje del fråze zh-classical:語法學 bat-smg:Sėntaksė zh:语法学This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The World News (WN) Network, has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to user privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for wn.com, as well as e-mail newsletters.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about you, except when you provide it to us. For example, if you submit an inquiry to us or sign up for our newsletter, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your contact details (name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.).
When you submit your personally identifiable information through wn.com, you are giving your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. If you would prefer that we not collect any personally identifiable information from you, please do not provide us with any such information. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
Except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we will use the information you provide us only for the purpose of responding to your inquiry or in connection with the service for which you provided such information. We may forward your contact information and inquiry to our affiliates and other divisions of our company that we feel can best address your inquiry or provide you with the requested service. We may also use the information you provide in aggregate form for internal business purposes, such as generating statistics and developing marketing plans. We may share or transfer such non-personally identifiable information with or to our affiliates, licensees, agents and partners.
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Such third parties may be provided with access to personally identifiable information needed to perform their functions, but may not use such information for any other purpose.
In addition, we may disclose any information, including personally identifiable information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal proceeding or governmental request.
We do not want you to receive unwanted e-mail from us. We try to make it easy to opt-out of any service you have asked to receive. If you sign-up to our e-mail newsletters we do not sell, exchange or give your e-mail address to a third party.
E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.