Definition:
(1) The study of the rules that govern the way words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences (and one of the major components of grammar). (2) The arrangement of words in a sentence. Adjective: syntactic.
Etymology:
From the Greek, "arrange together"Examples and Observations:
- "No difference between man and beast is more important than syntax."
(Herbert Read, English Prose Style, Beacon Press, 1952) - "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."
(Linguist Noam Chomsky created this sentence--which is grammatically correct but incomprehensible--to demonstrate that the rules governing syntax are distinct from the meanings words convey.) - "Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis."
(Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, 1971) - "Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar-room vernacular, that is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive."
(Raymond Chandler) - "Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints--the rules that run us. Language is using us to talk--we think we’re using the language, but language is doing the thinking, we’re its slavish agents."
(Harry Mathews)
Pronunciation: SIN-taks
