SYNTAX: THE SENTENCE PATTERNS OF LANGUAGE

In this chapter we could see that we can produce an infinite number of sentences by just adding some words that can be adjectives, nouns, adverbs etc. and phrases. But there are rules that explain how to combine those words in order to help us to understand the sense of a sentence. Those rules are called Syntax.

For example:

The phrase below is syntactically incorrect because it does not have sense.

Order words make sense need to…

But if we change the order of the words we can realize that now the phrase have sense

Words need order to make sense….

It is important to say that every language has its own rules; in English the correct way to combine words is SUBJECT + VERB + OBJECT. Also we have to take into account that a sentence can have different meanings depending in its word order. For example:

-I mean what I say.

- I say what I mean.

Furthermore, syntactic rules also tell us that in a sentences it can exists different group of words and it is important to know what we want to express because depending on that our intention can be misunderstood (ambiguity). For example:

-For sale: an antique desk suitable FOR LADY WITH THICK LEGS AND LARGE DRAWERS.

We will oil your sewing machine and adjust tension in your home for $10.00.

(Referring to the lady

-For sale: AN ANTIQUE DESK suitable for lady WITH THICK LEGS AND LARGE DRAWERS.

We will oil your sewing machine and adjust tension in your home for $10.00.

(Referring to the desk)

Besides it is not necessary that we had heard a phrase before to understand the meaning it carries, that is because our knowledge of the language is very creative; therefore, we can understand a phrase in different ways without the need that it can be true or not.

Syntax also help us to organize words in a hierarchical way and the most common way to make it is using the tree map where we can divide a sentence and give the correct role first to the groups we found in the sentence and then to each word.

After that, we could know about the constituents and the constituency tests. We understood that constituents are the different groups naturally formed in a sentence. For example:

(THE CHILD) (FOUND A PUPPY)

There are different constituency tests. The first one is “stand alone” in which the group of words can be the answer to a question. For example:

WHO FOUND THE PUPPY? “The child”

The second test is “replacement by a pronoun”. For example

WHO FOUND THE PUPPY? HE

The third test is “move as a unit” in which the group of words can be put in another place of the sentence. For example.

-THE CHILD FOUND THE PUPPY

-THE PUPPY WAS FOUND BY THE CHILD.

Finally, we knew the syntactic categories which are different expressions that belong to a family. These categories help us to divide sentences easily in the tree map. For example:

NOUN Puppy, childVERB Find

ADJECTIVE Ugly

ADVERB Carefully

PREPOSITION Below

REFERENCES

-All about linguistics. (25 de 09 de 2015). Obtenido de https://sites.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/all-about-linguistics/branches/syntax/what-is-syntax

-All about linguistics. (25 de 09 de 2015). Obtenido de https://sites.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/all-about-linguistics/branches/syntax/what-is-syntax

-Fromkin, V. (205). An introduction to language. En V. Fromkin, An introduction to language (págs. 118,123,125,128). Ibague: Assistant: Erin Pass.