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In linguistics, syntax (/sntks/ SIN-taks)[1][2] is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency),[3] agreement, the nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning (semantics). There are numerous approaches to syntax that differ in their central assumptions and goals.

The field of syntax contains a number of various topics that a syntactic theory is often designed to handle. The relation between the topics is treated differently in different theories, and some of them may not be considered to be distinct but instead to be derived from one another (i.e. word order can be seen as the result of movement rules derived from grammatical relations).

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One basic description of a language's syntax is the sequence in which the subject (S), verb (V), and object (O) usually appear in sentences. Over 85% of languages usually place the subject first, either in the sequence SVO or the sequence SOV. The other possible sequences are VSO, VOS, OVS, and OSV, the last three of which are rare. In most generative theories of syntax, the surface differences arise from a more complex clausal phrase structure, and each order may be compatible with multiple derivations. However, word order can also reflect the semantics or function of the ordered elements.[4]

For centuries, a framework known as grammaire gnrale, first expounded in 1660 by Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot in a book of the same title, dominated work in syntax:[7] as its basic premise the assumption that language is a direct reflection of thought processes and so there is a single most natural way to express a thought.[8]

The central role of syntax within theoretical linguistics became clear only in the 20th century, which could reasonably be called the "century of syntactic theory" as far as linguistics is concerned. (For a detailed and critical survey of the history of syntax in the last two centuries, see the monumental work by Giorgio Graffi (2001).[10])

There are a number of theoretical approaches to the discipline of syntax. One school of thought, founded in the works of Derek Bickerton,[11] sees syntax as a branch of biology, since it conceives of syntax as the study of linguistic knowledge as embodied in the human mind. Other linguists (e.g., Gerald Gazdar) take a more Platonistic view since they regard syntax to be the study of an abstract formal system.[12] Yet others (e.g., Joseph Greenberg) consider syntax a taxonomical device to reach broad generalizations across languages.

Syntacticians have attempted to explain the causes of word-order variation within individual languages and cross-linguistically. Much of such work has been done within the framework of generative grammar, which holds that syntax depends on a genetic endowment common to the human species. In that framework and in others, linguistic typology and universals have been primary explicanda.[13]

Dependency grammar is an approach to sentence structure in which syntactic units are arranged according to the dependency relation, as opposed to the constituency relation of phrase structure grammars. Dependencies are directed links between words. The (finite) verb is seen as the root of all clause structure and all the other words in the clause are either directly or indirectly dependent on the root. Some prominent dependency-based theories of syntax are the following:

Generative syntax is the study of syntax within the overarching framework of generative grammar. Generative theories of syntax typically propose analyses of grammatical patterns using formal tools such as phrase structure grammars augmented with additional operations such as syntactic movement. Their goal in analyzing a particular language is to specify rules which generate all and only the expressions which are well-formed in that language. In doing so, they seek to identify innate domain-specific principles of linguistic cognition, in line with the wider goals of the generative enterprise. Generative syntax is among the approaches that adopt the principle of the autonomy of syntax by assuming that meaning and communicative intent is determined by the syntax, rather than the other way around.

Generative syntax was proposed in the late 1950s by Noam Chomsky, building on earlier work by Zellig Harris, Louis Hjelmslev, and others. Since then, numerous theories have been proposed under its umbrella:

The syntax described so far is most of the traditional Unixegrepregular expression syntax.This subset suffices to describe all regularlanguages: loosely speaking, a regular language is a setof strings that can be matched in a single pass throughthe text using only a fixed amount of memory.Newer regular expression facilities (notably Perl andthose that have copied it) have addedmany new operators and escape sequences, which make the regularexpressions more concise, and sometimes more cryptic, but usuallynot more powerful.

Not to be confused with syntax in programming, syntax in linguistics refers to the arrangement of words and phrases. Syntax covers topics like word order and grammar rules, such as subject-verb agreement or the correct placement of direct and indirect objects.

Just how important is syntax in English? Changing the placement of a word often changes the meaning of the sentence. Sometimes the change is minor, useful for writers who like nuance and subtext, but sometimes the change is more significant, giving the entire sentence a whole new interpretation.

To see for yourself, look at the syntax examples below. Notice how moving the word only changes the meaning of the entire sentence. Keep in mind that only can be an adjective or an adverb; adjectives modify the nouns that come after them, and adverbs modify the verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs that come after them.

If you want to get technical with the English language, there are dozens of rules about syntax you can study. However, these can get confusing, and some require an expert understanding of English, so below we list only the five basic rules of syntax in English, which are enough for constructing simple sentences correctly.

When the sentence uses both a direct object and an adverbial complement, the direct object comes first, followed by the adverbial complement. In this syntax example, up is the adverbial complement because it describes how the dog perked its ears.

In the hands of a skilled writer, syntax can make the difference between a bland sentence and a legendary quote. Combining syntax with certain literary devices, like antithesis, chiasmus, or paradox, can help anyone make their writing stand out. Just look at these famous syntax examples from literature.

One of the best applications of syntax for writers is parallelism, or using the same structure for different phrases. As this passage from Lee shows, parallelism allows for direct comparisons and also sounds poetic.

While there are specific rules for word order within a clause or sentence, the writer is still free to choose different types of syntax to order the words and clauses. For example, one could write a compound sentence containing two independent clauses or two simple sentences containing one independent clause each.

The spread (...) syntax allows an iterable, such as an array or string, to be expanded in places where zero or more arguments (for function calls) or elements (for array literals) are expected. In an object literal, the spread syntax enumerates the properties of an object and adds the key-value pairs to the object being created.

Spread syntax looks exactly like rest syntax. In a way, spread syntax is the opposite of rest syntax. Spread syntax "expands" an array into its elements, while rest syntax collects multiple elements and "condenses" them into a single element. See rest parameters and rest property.

Spread syntax can be used when all elements from an object or array need to be included in a new array or object, or should be applied one-by-one in a function call's arguments list. There are three distinct places that accept the spread syntax:

When calling a constructor with new, it's not possible to directly use an array and apply(), because apply() calls the target function instead of constructing it, which means, among other things, that new.target will be undefined. However, an array can be easily used with new thanks to spread syntax:

Without spread syntax, the array literal syntax is no longer sufficient to create a new array using an existing array as one part of it. Instead, imperative code must be used using a combination of methods, including push(), splice(), concat(), etc. With spread syntax, this becomes much more succinct:

In the above example, the spread syntax does not work as one might expect: it spreads an array of arguments into the object literal, due to the rest parameter. Here is an implementation of merge using the spread syntax, whose behavior is similar to Object.assign(), except that it doesn't trigger setters, nor mutates any object:

Spread syntax looks exactly like rest syntax. In a way, spread syntax is the opposite of rest syntax. Spread syntax \"expands\" an array into its elements, while rest syntax collects multiple elements and \"condenses\" them into a single element. See rest parameters and rest property. e24fc04721