MODUL PERKULIAHAN
English
Syntax
About Syntax
Faculty of English WEEK Kode MK Compiled by:
01
Languages Department 190751104 Sasmi Farida, dra., [Link].
Abstract Competency
This module focusing on word Upon completion of this module,
order in English Sentence, students will be able to define
grammatical and ungrammatical syntax and identify grammatical
English Sentence as well as and ungrammatical sentence.
terminology in English syntax
1. ABOUT SYNTAX
1.1 What is syntax
The word syntax derives from the Greek word syntaxis, which means
arrangement. It is a sub-discipline of linguistics that studies the structure of a sentence.
It refers to the rules of how words combine to form sentences, clauses, and phrases. It is
primarily concerned with word order in a sentence and with the agreement of words
when they are used together. In other words, syntax is the study of the rules that must be
followed to create well-formed phrases, clauses and sentences. Let‘s study the following
example:
[1] the cat cute
noun adjective
The example [1] is not a good construction. In English grammar, an adjective is never
placed after a noun. Therefore, the word construction is incorrect word-order. To make
it correct, place the adjective before the noun, now the order becomes the cute cat.
By this illustration, it can be said that in combining words we need some rules.
These rules are called grammar. In other words, we can say that syntax is the study of
the rules that must be followed to create well-formed phrases, clauses and sentences.
Look at the example [2],
[2] Audrain speaks English.
subject verb
Example [2] is a good English sentence because the word order follows the rules. The
sentence has a subject and a verb. The verb follows the subject. When the word-order is
changed into English Audrain speaks or Speaks Audrain English, then this is not English
syntax. They do not follow English word order; they are grammatically incorrect.
What do you think about the following sentences? Are they written in good English
syntax?
[3] John always is late.
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[4] The children have done carelessly their homework.
[5] Where did you two months ago meet your professor?
The answer is definitely no. All those sentences are not good English sentences. Do
you know why? Let‘s see one by one.
Sentence [3], adverb of frequency always should be placed after the verb is. The
object, their homework, in sentence [4] should be directly placed after the verb done
while the expression of time, yesterday, should be placed at the end of the question.
How about sentence [5]? Do you know why the sentence is grammatically incorrect?
Let‘s discuss it, would you go to the FORUM?
Word order is important in English. However, syntax is not only word order, it
also concerns with the agreement of words when they are used together.
For example:
[6] The student reads their book.
This sentence does not make sense. The student may have more than one book, but he
(the student) is only reading one book. For there to be agreement, the possessive ‗his‘
not ‗their‘ has to be correct.
The student reads his book.
the student → singular
his → singular
book → singular
Therefore, ‗The student reads his book.‘ is the correct use of the singular
possessive (his).
Syntax also concerns with the rule of placing the verbs in agreement with the
subjects in number and person. Thus, if a subject is singular, its verb must also be
singular; if a subject is plural, its verb must also be plural. Example:
[7] The students read their books.
Subject verb
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the students (with —s) → plural subject
read (with no —s) → plural verb
Read the following sentence, is it grammatical or ungrammatical?
[8] They said they wasn‟t coming.
When your answer is ungrammatical, you are correct. The sentence is grammatically
incorrect or ungrammatical structure. It illustrates a subject-verb disagreement in the
dependent clause. There is wrong to use ‗was‘ with plural pronoun. To make this
sentence grammatically correct, change the auxiliary ‗was‘ with ‗were‘. Then, we get
plural subject and plural verb.
Ungrammatical structure or grammatically incorrect structure refers to phrase or
clause or sentence which does not follow the rules or principles of grammar. For
example:
[9] The boy found.
The sentence [9] must have the string of words that conform to the rule of syntax, such
as subject the boy, predicate found needs an object. Since this sentence does not have an
object, the sentence is grammatically incorrect structure.
Syntax and grammar are terms that have to do with the rules of formation of
sentences. Both are the knowledge of making a good phrase, clause, and absolutely in
making a correct sentence. They are very closely related. Syntax is simply the way
words are organized structurally to form phrases, clauses, or sentences. It can be either
grammatically correct or incorrect, it is still syntax.
Syntax deals with their functions in sentences – subjects, objects, attributes etc.
For example:
[10] My neighbour bought a house.
Neighbour and house are both nouns, but in that sentence, they are different in
function. Neighbour is subject and house is object. So, the syntax of the sentence is
Subject (My neighbour) — predicate (bought) — object (a house)
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Grammar is a set of rules that are used regarding how syntax should be structured.
Some examples of grammar would be the rule: the verb should always follow the
subject,
We are studying syntax,
subject verb
or the „to‟ in an infinitive verb construction must always be followed immediately by the
verb.
They want to study English syntax.
Grammar study includes the study of rules in the fields of morphology, syntax, and
phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics. Precisely, it
can be said that grammar is a set of rules including syntax. In simple we can say
grammar tells how to say things correctly while syntax tells us what goes where in a
sentence,
Some linguists say that there are two parts of grammar. One part is morphology,
something to do with word-construction. Let‘s take an example of the construction of
the word ‗untouchable‟. It has three morphemes: un-, touch, and –able. The other part
is syntax. It is the study of sentences and their structure and the constructions within
sentences.
Other examples:
[11] a. looking Audrain is for a new bicycle
b. Audrain is looking for a new bicycle
Example [11a] does not make any sense, even though it contains the same words as the
example [11b]. The only difference exists in the word order. Therefore, the word order
is a key element in the syntax.
A sentence can be syntactically correct, yet have no meaning. Let see the
following example, offered by Chomsky,
Colorless, green ideas sleep furiously.
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This sentence does not make any sense, does it? It would probably never be heard
spoken in this order in actual conversation, but all of the words are used correctly.
It is syntactically correct. In this sentence, adjective and adverb are placed in the
correct order; subject and verb are in accordance with each other. So, it is not just the
word order but it is also a kind of acceptability or unacceptability as Gasser (2003)
cites that the grammaticality or the acceptability can occur in some non-standard dialect,
but ungrammaticality in the standard dialect. Gasser (2003) provides examples as in
(12a) and (12b).
[12] a. I come back last night.
b. I came back last night.
The use of ‗come‘ in (12a) as the past tense of come is grammatical in some non-
standard English dialects but not in Standard English. Furthermore, Gasser (2003) also
provides another example as follows.
[13] a. How did y‟all like the party?
b. How did you like the party?
In some non-standard dialects of American English, y‟all as in (13a) means ‗you plural‘.
It is perfectly grammatical in those dialects but not in the standard dialect (Gasser 2003).
A sentence must demand a semantic agreement since the semantic grammaticality
and acceptability lies in the relationship between its sentence and the real-world (Alwi
et al.1998:316—317), as in,
(14) a. Horses are animals.
b. *Horses are plants
The sentence [14a] is grammatical and acceptable since all horses are animals. In the
real-world, however, all horses are not plants as in [14b]. Therefore it is not acceptable.
Another kind of acceptability is determined by a number agreement in a sentence
(Alwi et al.1998:317). Let‘s see the following examples:
[15] a. The young man was here yesterday.
b. *The young men was here yesterday.
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Example [15a] is grammatical and acceptable, while [15b] is ungrammatical but
acceptable for some speakers, and it is meaningful. Acceptability can occur in a false
sentence, but when it does not make sense, a false sentence must be unacceptable.
Example:
[16] Two plus two is five.
Therefore, this means that most sentences, in all situation or context, can be acceptable
without the grammaticality of the sentences. We can also say that the acceptability is
more basic rather than the grammaticality since all hearers of English could
understand or interpret what those speakers convey.
Exercise 1: Identify whether each of the following examples is grammatical or
ungrammatical.
1. Who is the man who dancing?
2. The children watched in the house
3. The children watched TV with their parents
4. The children found quickly
5. Audra helped her mother in the kitchen
6. She talked to her mother very soft.
7. A small wood table in the corner
8. The cat is sleeping on the sofa
9. At that park, bears don‘t have names; they have numbers.
10. It is the children who run.
1.2 What does syntax study
Syntax looks at the ways in which the word categories can be ordered or
combined. This means that we look at the order, or distribution, of those categories. For
instance, the combination of determiner, noun, and verb, such as
[17] a. “The cat slept”
determiner noun verb
b. “The boy died.”
noun verb
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Both [17a] and [17b] are grammatically correct structure. Do not put the words in
the order as below,
- noun, determiner, verb → *cat the slept or
- verb, determiner, noun, → *died boy the
because they are not sentences that can be produced by the rules of English grammar.
We called these sentences ungrammatical (still remember?). In language studies
examples of ungrammatical constructions are usually preceded by asterisks (*).
Syntax does not focus on right or wrong, syntax uses ‗grammatical‘ and
‗ungrammatical‘ as a way to show that a particular word combination is possible or
impossible for speakers of a language. Let‘s study the following sentences,
[18] a. Who did you talk to?
b. To whom did you talk?
Sentence [18 a] is less ‗grammatical‘ than [18 b], even though we‘re taught that it‘s the
‗right‘ way to speak!
Here is not about to say right or wrong, but to describe how people do use
language. So, why in English we cannot put these word categories in this order? Why
does this phrase no longer make sense? These are the sorts of questions syntacticians try
to answer.
Based on what we have been discussed before, it can be said that syntax studies
- syntactic category including classes of words
- inner division of sentences (subject and predicate)
- syntactic constituent-hood
- phrase structure rules
- a basic syntactic function.
- diagramming sentences
- syntactic ambiguity
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1.3 Why study syntax
Studying syntax gives us knowledge for understanding how language works as
well as doing future research and theories on all aspects of linguistics. Studying syntax
is relevant to a lot of subject areas in linguistics. We must study syntax to understand
how we acquire our language, how we start constructing sentences and what stage we
learn the tacit syntactic rules of the language. It‘s also good to study syntax so we can
understand how bilingual and multilingual speakers are able to construct their sentences
despite having different structures for different languages.
We also study syntax to develop set rules and constraints on the language. We
call these parameters. These parameters limit what we can and can‘t do in a language,
helping us establish an effective and working communicative system. Some linguists
believe that all languages have the same parameters. This idea is called universal
grammar. It was a theory developed by Chomsky in the 1960s. From these ideas of
linguistic parameters, we can learn, use, and teach the correct way to make sentences.
In short, there are many reasons for studying syntax, among others are,
- to help us to illustrate the patterns of English more effectively and clearly.
- to enable us to analyze the structure of English sentences in a systematic and explicit
way.
- to understand how each word is categorized, and how it contributes to a whole
sentence.
- to identify these different meanings.
Knowledge of English syntax provides a great help to understand simple as well as
complex sentence.
1. What is the study of language and languages?
2. What is the term used to describe word order?
_________________________________
The end of the lesson
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References:
Gasser, Michael. 2003. ―What Linguists Do, What Linguists Don‘t Do‖. Second Edition.
2 February 2003. [Link]
Maggie Tallerman 2011. Understanding Syntax third edition. Saffron House, Kirby
Street London.
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