Syntax
Dr. Khalil Ahmad
Syntax
From Greek, Syntax is from syn (together) + taxis
(arrangement), i.e. to arrange items together.
Syntax is the branch of linguistics that deals with the study of
the structure of phrases, clauses and sentences in a
language.
It involves the rules that govern the arrangement of words to
form meaningful and grammatical sentences.
Syntax…
Syntax is concerned with the order of words and the
relationships between them in a sentence.
It investigates the ways in which words can be combined to
form phrases and clauses, and how these can be further
combined to form larger units such as sentences.
• Word order
• Their relationship
Word order
Word order refers to the way words are arranged in a sentence.
The standard word order in English is:
Subject + Verb + Object (SVO). To determine the proper sequence
of words, you need to understand what the subject, verb and
object(s) are.
• Subject: typically a noun or pronoun—the person, place or thing
• Verb: the action or state of being
• Object: the word or group of words influenced by the verb
The sequence of words is critical when communicating in English
because it can impact the meaning of what you’re trying to say.
Word order…
• Word order?
1.
• A. I want these books.
• *B. want these I books.
2.
• * A. Dropped the boy the ball.
B. The boy dropped the ball.
* C. The ball dropped the boy.
Agreement
In syntax, agreement is the correspondence of:
• Subject with its verb in person and number,
• Pronoun with its antecedent in person, number, and
gender.
• Demonstratives and nouns
• Another term for grammatical agreement is concord.
Agreement…
• 1. Subject-verb:
• A. John drinks a lot of water.
• *B. John drink a lot of water.
• A. Ali is writing a letter.
• *B. Ali are writing a letter.
• A. We are playing cricket.
• *B. We is playing cricket.
• A. You have won the match.
• *B. You has won the match.
Agreement…
• 2. Pronoun-antecedent:
• A. Ayesha has done her work.
• *B. Ayesha has done their work.
• 3. Demonstratives and nouns:
• A. This book is mine.
• *B. These book is mine.
• A. Those people are mad.
• *B. That people are mad.
Case-Marking
‘Case’ means ‘role’; and ‘Case-marking’ refers to assigning
roles to nouns or noun phrases (NPs) in respect to verbs in a
sentence. The nouns or noun phrases that are assigned roles
are technically known as Arguments.
• In other words, case-marking is marking the arguments
(NPs) in a sentence in respect to verbs to indicate what is
the subject and what is the object of the verb.
Case-marking…
Case-marking is implemented in various languages, in
various ways including:
• word-order, inflection, preposition (English)
• inflection (German, Russian, Arabic, etc.)
• adposition (Pashto, Japanese, Korean, etc.)
Case-marking…
English mostly uses word-order, inflection and preposition to
distinguish subjects of verbs from the objects of verbs, e.g.
• John kicked the ball.
‘John’ is the ‘subject’ because it is marked by preceding the
verb ‘kicked’ and ‘the ball’ is the ‘object’ because it is
marked by following the verb.
Case-marking…
English, moreover, also uses inflection and prepositions to
mark cases. For example,
John introduced his mother to William.
• First, the subject of the verb is ‘John’, which is so marked by
preceding the verb,
• The direct object is ‘his mother’, which is so marked by
following the verb
• And the preposition ‘to’ marks ‘William’ as the indirect
object of the verb ‘introduced’.
• Finally, the word ‘his’ is an inflected form of ‘he’ used here to
mark its genitive role in relation to the relational-noun
‘mother’.
Prominent Cases in English
S.
No Name Marker Role and Example
Used before Usually the subject of a verb
1 Nominative
verb {John/He/She} respects everyone
Used after Usually the direct object of a transitive verb
2 Accusative
verb Everyone respects {John/him/her}
Usually the indirect object of a di-transitive verb
3 Dative To
John wrote a letter to {William/him/her}.
Usually the indirect object of a di-transitive verb
4 Ablative from
John received a letter from {William/him/her}
Usually the agent in passive construction
5 Perlative by
John is respected by {William/him/her}.
Associated with some relational nouns, i.e. mother, brother,
of friend, capital etc.
6 Genitive
‘s Laila is the mother of Ali.
