Syntax

In linguistics, syntax (/ˈsɪnˌtæks/) is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, specifically word order. The term syntax is also used to refer to the study of such principles and processes. The goal of many syntacticians is to discover the syntactic rules common to all languages.

In mathematics, syntax refers to the rules governing the behavior of mathematical systems, such as formal languages used in logic. (See logical syntax.)

Etymology

The word syntax comes from Ancient Greek: σύνταξις "coordination", which consists of σύν syn, "together," and τάξις táxis, "an ordering".

Sequencing of subject, verb, and object

A basic feature 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.

Syntactic Structures

Syntactic Structures is a book in linguistics by American linguist Noam Chomsky, first published in 1957. A seminal work in 20th-century linguistics, it laid the foundations of Chomsky's ideas on generative grammar. It contains the famous sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously," which Chomsky offered as an example of a grammatically correct sentence that has no meaning.

Background

Chomsky had an interest in language from a very young age. His father William Chomsky was one of the foremost Hebrew linguists in the world. At the age of twelve, Chomsky read an early form of his father's David Kimhi's Hebrew Grammar (Mikhlol) (1952), an annotated study of a thirteenth-century Hebrew grammar. At sixteen, Chomsky started his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania. There during his freshman year, he studied Arabic (out of interest in Arab-Jewish cooperation in a binational Palestine) and was the only student to do so. In 1947, the year this university established its linguistics department, Chomsky met Zellig Harris, a prominent Bloomfieldian linguist. Chomsky became very close to Harris and proofread the manuscript of Harris's Methods in Structural Linguistics (1951). This was Chomsky's introduction to formal, theoretical linguistics and soon he decided to major in the subject.