The linguistic landscape is littered with literally hundreds if not thousands of theories of synt... more The linguistic landscape is littered with literally hundreds if not thousands of theories of syntax, many with no more than a handful of adherents, a smallish number with considerable numbers of practitioners; just a few theories dominate over the rest, and account for the majority of syntacticians. Syntactic theories are commonly grouped into two broad types, formal and functional (see §1.5). Formal theories of syntax focus on linguistic form, relegating meaning to a peripheral position. Functional theories by contrast tend to focus on the functions language serves, and the ways that syntax is organised to serve these functions; meaning plays a central role.
The linguistic landscape is littered with literally hundreds if not thousands of theories of synt... more The linguistic landscape is littered with literally hundreds if not thousands of theories of syntax, many with no more than a handful of adherents, a smallish number with considerable numbers of practitioners; just a few theories dominate over the rest, and account for the majority of syntacticians. Syntactic theories are commonly grouped into two broad types, formal and functional (see §1.5). Formal theories of syntax focus on linguistic form, relegating meaning to a peripheral position. Functional theories by contrast tend to focus on the functions language serves, and the ways that syntax is organised to serve these functions; meaning plays a central role.
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