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WHAT IS SYNTAX?

The term syntax comes from the Greek, meaning "arrange together." The term is also
used to mean the study of the syntactic properties of a language. Syntax is one of the major
components of grammar.

Syntax is the part of linguistics that studies the structure and formation of sentences.
It explains how words and phrases are arranged to form correct sentences. A sentence could
make no sense and still be correct from the syntax point of view as long as words are in their
appropriate spots and agree with each other.

For native speakers, using correct syntax is something that comes naturally, as word
order is learned as soon as an infant starts absorbing the language. Native speakers can tell
something isn't said quite right because it "sounds weird," even if they can't detail the exact
grammar rule that makes something sound "off" to the ear.

Syntactic structures
A generative grammar defines the syntactic structures of a language. The grammar
will generate all the well-formed syntactic structures (e.g. sentences) of the language and will
not generate any ill-formed structures.
Deep and surface structure
Two superficially different sentences are shown in these examples.
Charlie broke the window.
The window was broken by Charlie.
In traditional grammar, the first is called an active sentence, focusing on what Charlie
did, and the second is a passive sentence, focusing on The window and what happened to it.
The distinction between them is a difference in their surface structure, that is, the different
syntactic forms they have as individual English sentences. This other ‘underlying’ level,
where the basic components (noun phrase + verb + noun phrase) shared by the two
sentences can be represented, is called their deep structure.
Structural ambiguity
’ The other expresses the idea that ‘Annie whacked a man and the man happened to
be carrying an umbrella. ’Now, these two different versions of events can actually be
expressed in the same surface structure form: Annie whacked a man with an umbrella. This
sentence provides an example of structural ambiguity.
Recursion
The rules of the grammar will also need the crucial property of recursion. Recursive
(‘repeatable any number of times’) rules have the capacity to be applied more than once in
generating a structure. For example, we can have one prepositional phrase describing
location (on the table) in the sentence The gun was on the table. We can also repeat this
type of phrase, using different words (near the window), for as long as the sentence still
makes sense (in the bedroom).
SIMBOL THAT USED IN SYNTATIC DESCRIPTION
S = Sentence
VP = Verp Phrase
V = Verb
NP = Noun Phrase
N = Noun
PP = Prepositional Phrase
Prep = Preposition
Adv = Adverb
Adj = Adjective
Art = Article
PN = Proper Noun
Pro = Pronoun
* = Ungrammatical Sentence
( ... ) = Optional Constituent
{ ... } = one and only one of these constituents must be selected
→ = consists of, or rewrites as
Example :
NP→ Art, (Adj) Noun = Noun Phrase that Consists of Article, Adjective (as option), and Noun.
As like The Dog , or The Big Dog(kalau dirasa kada perlu dihapus)

TREE DIAGRAMS
Tree Diagrams is the most common way create a visual representation of syntactic
structure.

You See the Dog


S

NP VP

V NP

Pro Art N

You See The Dog

PHRASE STRUCTURE RULES

As the name suggests,these rules state that the structure of a phrase of a specific
type will consist of one or more constituents in a particular order. We can use phrase
structure rules to present the information of the tree diagram in another format. That is, the
information shown in the tree diagram on the left can be expressed in the phrase structure
rule on the right.

NP

Art N NP Art N

According to this rule, “a noun phrase rewrites as an article followed by a noun.” The
first rule in the following set of simple (and necessarily incomplete) phrase structure rules
states that “a sentence rewrites as a noun phrase and a verb phrase.” The second rule
statesthat “a noun phrase rewrites aseitheran article plus an optional adjective plus a noun,
or a pronoun,or a proper noun.”The other rules follow a similar pattern.

S → NP VP

NP → {Art (Adj) N, Pro, PN}

VP → V NP (PP) (Adv)

PP → Prep NP

LEXICAL RULES

Phrase structure rules generate structures. In order to turn those structures into
recognizable English, we also need lexical rules that specify which words can be used when
we rewrite constituents such as N. The first rule in the following set states that “a proper
noun rewrites as Mary or George.” (It’s a very small world.)

PN → {Mary, George}

N → {girl, dog, boy}

Art → {a, the}

Pro → {it, you}

V → {followed, helped, saw}

We can rely on these rules to generate the grammatical sentences shown below as
(1) to (6), but not the ungrammatical sentences shown as (7) to (12).

(1) A dog followed the boy. (7) *Dog followed boy.

(2) Mary helped George. (8) *The helped you boy.

(3) George saw the dog. (9) *George Mary dog.

(4) The boy helped you. (10) *Helped George the dog.

(5) It followed Mary. (11) *You it saw.

(6) You saw it. (12) *Mary George helped.

As a way of visualizing how the phrase structure rules form the basis of these
sentences, we can draw the tree diagrams for sentences (1) and (6).

Back to recursion
The simple phrase structure rules listed earlier have no recursive elements. Each
time we start to create an S, we only create a single S (sentence structure). We actually
need to be able to include sentence structures within other sentence structures.
Complement phrases
The word that, as used in these examples, is called a complementizer (C). The role
of that as a complementizer is to introduce a complement phrase (CP). For example, in the
second sentence (Cathy knew . . .), we can identify one CP which contains that plus Mary
helped George. We already know that Mary helped George is a sentence (S).

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