Syntax

Definition of Syntax:
Syntax refers to the ways in which we order specific words to create logical, meaningful sentences.
While the parts of speech are all the different types of words that we can use, syntax is the set of
rules, patterns, or processes by which we can put them together. In other words, it is the study of
the structure and ordering of the components within a sentence.

Etymology: The word “Syntax” literally means “a putting together” or “arrangement”. The
word syntax comes from Ancient Greek: σύνταξις "coordination", which consists of σύν syn,
"together", and τάξις táxis, "an ordering".

Function of Syntax:
To convey meaning is one of the main functions of syntax. In literature, writers utilize syntax and
diction to achieve certain artistic effects, like mood, and tone. Like diction, syntax aims to affect the
readers as well as express the writer’ attitude

Examples of Syntax in Literature

SYNTAX IN POETRY
The general word order of an English sentence is Subject+Verb+Object. In poetry, however, the
word order may be shifted to achieve certain artistic effects, such as producing rhythm or melody
in the lines, achieving emphasis, and heightening connection between two words. The unique
syntax used in poetry makes it different from prose. Let us consider the following examples of
syntax:

Example #1: Beyond Decoration (By P. J. Kavanagh)

In casual conversations, we can simply say, “I cannot go out” to convey our inability to go out. P. J.
Kavanagh’s poem Beyond Decoration does not rely on merely stating a prosaic “I cannot go out.”
Rather, he shifts the syntax and says “Go out I cannot,” which lays a much stronger emphasis on the
inability to go out conveyed by the word “cannot.”

Example #2: Lycidas (By John Milton)

Similarly, John Milton shifts words in his poems frequently. Let us analyze lines from his
poem Lycidas:

“Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves,

With wild thyme and the gadding vine o’ergrown,
And all their echoes mourn”

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The modified word order in the above lines is Object+Subject+Subject Complement+Verb.

SYNTAX IN PROSE
Syntax affects the nature of a prose text as well. It enhances its meanings, and contributes toward
its tone. Quickness, decisiveness, and speed are added to a text by using short phrases, clauses, and
sentences. Whereas, in a text where the subject matter is serious, requiring contemplation, long,
convoluted sentences are used to slow down the pace of a prose text. The two syntax examples
below show a distinct use of syntax:

Example #3: The Joy Luck Club (By Amy Tan)

“That night I sat on Tyan-yu’s bed and waited for him to touch me. But he didn’t. I was relieved.”

Here, Amy Tan uses short sentences to communicate in a powerful and concise manner.

Example #4: A Farewell to Arms (By Ernest Hemingway)

“They left me alone and I lay in bed and read the papers awhile, the news from the front, and the
list of dead officers with their decorations and then reached down and brought up the bottle of
Cinzano and held it straight up on my stomach, the cool glass against my stomach, and took little
drinks making rings on my stomach from holding the bottle there between drinks, and watched it
get dark outside over the roofs of the town.”

Ernest Hemingway uses long and complex structures to emphasize the laziness of his character.

SYNTAX IN SHAKESPEARE
Writing all of his plays and sonnets in iambic pentameter, Shakespeare habitually reversed the
general order of English sentences by placing verbs at the ends of the sentences.

Example #5: Romeo and Juliet (By William Shakespeare)

 “What light from yonder window breaks?”

Instead of using the common expression, “What light breaks from yonder window,” Shakespeare
emphasized his meaning by using different syntax.

Example #6: Richard III (By William Shakespeare)

In Richard III, Shakespeare deliberately reverses the word order of a sentence, turning a common
description: “And all the clouds that lowered upon our house buried in the deep bosom of the
ocean,” into:

“And all the clouds that lower’d upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean buried.”

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Syntactic Rules:
Criterion for Syntax-The “all and only” criterion:
This means that our analysis must account for all the
grammatically correct phrases and sentences and only those grammatically correct
phrases and sentences in whatever language we are analyzing. In other words, if we
write rules for the creation of well-formed structures, we have to check that those rules,
when applied logically, won’t also lead to ill-formed structures.

Goal of Syntax-A Generative Grammar:

One of the basic goals of syntactic analysis, is to have a small and
finite (i.e. limited) set of rules that will be capable of producing a large and potentially
infinite (i.e. unlimited) number of well-formed structures. This small and finite set of
rules is sometimes described as a generative grammar because it can be used to
“generate” or produce sentence structures and not just describe them.
This type of grammar should also be capable of revealing the basis of two other
phenomena: first, how some superficially different sentences are closely related and,
second, how some superficially similar sentences are in fact different.

DEEP AND SURFACE STRUCTURE

Surface Structure:
Representation of a string of words or morphemes as they occur in a sentence, together with labels 
and brackets that represent syntactic structure

Deep Structure:

In early theories of generative grammar, a syntactic structure that expresses certain core semantic r
elationships in a construction and is the source from which surface structure is derived.

The grammar must be capable of showing how a single underlying abstract representation can
become different surface structures.

Structural ambiguity:
It is a situation in which a single phrase or sentence has two (or more) different underlying
structures and interpretations. For Example: if we look into the following sentence:

Flying planes can be dangerous. It has two distinct underlying interpretations that
have to be represented differently in deep structure

It could either mean that

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 1. The planes that fly are dangerous, or
2. The act of flying the planes can be dangerous.

Our syntactic analysis will have to be capable of showing the structural distinction between these
underlying representations.

Recursion:
It is the repeated application of a rule in generating structures. Basically, the grammar will have to
capture the fact that a sentence can have another sentence inside it or that a phrase can be
repeated as often as required. 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. In traditional grammar, these “sentence structures” were described as “clauses.”

VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE-

1. TREE DIAGRAMS:
One of the most common ways to create a visual representation of syntactic structure is
through tree diagrams. For this purpose, we can use symbols like (Art = article,
N = noun, NP = noun phrase) to label parts of the tree as we try to capture the
hierarchical organization of those parts in the underlying structure of phrases and
sentences. So, we can take the information in a labeled and bracketed format, shown
on the left, and present it in a tree diagram, shown on the right.
Although this kind of “tree,” with its “branches,” shown on the right, seems to grow
down rather than up, it functions rather well as a diagram representing all the
grammatical information found in the other analysis on the left. It also shows very
explicitly that there are different levels in the analysis. That is, there is a level of
analysis at which a constituent such as NP is represented and a different, lower, level at which a
constituent such as N is represented. This type of hierarchical organization can
be illustrated in a tree diagram for a whole sentence, beginning at the top with S.
If we start at the top of the tree diagram, we begin with a sentence (S) and divide it
into two constituents (NP and VP). In turn, the NP constituent is divided into two
other constituents (Art and N). Finally, one word is selected that fits the label Art
(the) and another that fits N (girl). You can go through the same procedure with the
VP branches.

Symbols used in syntactic analysis:

The list of common symbols and abbreviations is summarized here.

S
NP noun phrase PN proper noun
sentence

N noun VP verb phrase Adv adverb

V verb Adj adjective Prep preposition

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 Art PP prepositional
Pro pronoun
article phrase

*
ungrammatical sentence
→
consists of / rewrites as
optional constituent
()
one and only one of these constituents must be selected
{}

2. PHRASE STRUCTURE RULES:

Rules stating that the structure of a phrase of a specific type consists 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.

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 states that “a noun phrase rewrites as either an 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

3. LEXICAL RULES:
Rules stating which words can be used for constituents generated by phrase structure 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

4. MOVEMENT RULES:
Rules that are used to move constituents in structures derived from phrase structure rules. In making the
question, we move one part of the structure to a different position. This process is based on a movement
rule.. They have a special rewrite arrow: ⇒

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COMPLEMENT PHRASE (CP): a complement phrase rewrites as a complementizer and a sentence,”
or CP → C S.

a structure such as that “Mary helped George” used to complete construction beginning with a
structure such as “Cathy knew”. The role of complementizer is to introduce a complement phrase
(CP).

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