Chapter 4: Syntax

by Heidrun Dorgeloh

Syntax, together with inflectional morphology, belongs to what is in traditional terminology the 'grammar of a language'. People have many associations with that term and not all of them are necessarily positive. For example, some people believe that certain uses of language are instances of 'bad grammar', that everyday spoken language and youth slang 'lack grammar' or that the grammar of their native language is deteriorating. All these views are based on a normative, or prescriptive, attitude towards grammar, while linguists approach grammar, just like any other aspect of language, descriptively, in the same way that a biologist approaches an organism or a physician looks at molecules.

Languages change over time, as do the needs of their speakers, and while a conversation with your friends may be linguistically different from a political speech, a piece of poetry or a newspaper article, it is not 'less grammatical'. The use of a sentence in actual situations, i.e. its utterance, may be more or less acceptable given that context; also, its content, or its proposition, may be untrue or may not make sense; still, any competent speaker of a language is able to decide which strings of words form grammatical sequences, i.e. sentences, and which don't. It is this invisible and at the same time highly productive grammatical system which is at work every time we construct a linguistic unit more complex than a single word. Just like morphology, syntax is not concerned with what a sentence means, but with the internal structure of units and their relations to one another. In other words, syntax asks which sentences are in accord with the grammatical rules imposed by a particular language and which aren’t. It is important to recognize that this status of sentences is an idealized one to some extent: Spoken language often consists of incomplete utterances and seemingly disjointed pieces, but this does not mean that these utterances are 'less grammatical'.

Grammar and inflectional morphology

The term 'grammar' covers the proper use of words and word-forms as well as the grammatical structure of phrases, clauses, and sentences. While different word-forms of lexemes are created by the adding of inflectional morphemes, combinations of words into more complex units are the domain of syntax proper. Grammatical categories that are marked by English inflectional morphology are tense, person, number, gender, case, and comparison. Most of these grammatical categories which can thus be formed synthetically can also be expressed analytically (such as the comparison of adjectives, or possessive case); others are always formed periphrastically, i.e. by the use of function words (such as many tenses, or voice), or are no longer expressed at all (such as grammatical gender). Due to its limited number of inflectional morphemes, Modern English is considered an isolating, or analytic, language.

Sentence structure

Sentences are not simply chains of words, but have an internal, mostly hierarchical structure. This grammatical hierarchy can be illustrated by the following list of the categories used for the analysis of sentence structure:

1. sentences contain one or several
2. clauses contain one or several
3. phrases contain one or several
4. words from different word classes

Word classes

The starting-point of the analysis of sentence structure is the classification of words into word classes or, more traditionally, parts of speech. A basic division is made between lexical and grammatical (or functional) word classes; to the former belong nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, to the latter the classes of determiners, pronouns, prepositions, and conjunctions. While speakers come up with new lexical words quite frequently, i.e. these constitute a rather open set, function words usually form a closed system. Although word class definitions have traditionally been based on semantic criteria, it is much safer to define a word class on the basis of structural, i.e. morphological and syntactic, criteria.

There are a number of constituency tests, such as substitution, movement, and coordination, which can show which groups of words form syntactic units and which do not. For example, in the sentence represented above, The duck could be replaced by it or could be coordinated with another NP, while the sequence of words duck left or left the does not show this form of syntactic behavior.

Example:

It left the pool. (= substitution test for NP)
The duck and the penguin left the pool. (coordination test for NP)

Types of phrases

Different types of phrases are defined by different types of lexical heads, so each phrase type has its central, obligatory element: There are noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, adverb phrases, and prepositional phrases.

Examples:

[The duck] = NP [left the pool]= VP.
[In the morning] = PP [the duck] [left the pool].
[The [incredibly stupid] = AdjP] duck] [left the pool].
[The duck] [left the pool [incredibly slowly] = AdvP].

As can be seen in some of these examples, in phrase structure phrases are frequently 'packaged' inside other phrases, giving sentences their internal hierarchical structure. The productivity of syntax that results from the - at least potentially - unlimited embedding and coordination of phrases within other phrases has been described as the recursiveness of grammar.

Clauses

While words and morphemes have meaning, it is only phrases that can have reference. A clause, then, consists of a referring expression and a predication, which is why only clauses carry information about something. The referring expression is always a noun phrase (NP), while the predication is a verb phrase (VP). Accordingly, a complete English sentence, such as the following example sentence, will always contain these components.

Example:

[The duck] = NP [left the pool] = VP.

Grammatical relations

While the constituents of a sentence are its formal components, syntactic roles or grammatical relations define the functional relationship within the clause, in particular the relation of all the other constituents (the arguments) to the verb. In a clause there is always a noun phrase that fills the role of subject in relation to the main verb, other roles are assigned depending on the transitivity of the verb: Intransitive verbs do not permit an object, monotransitive require a direct object, while ditransitives have so-called double object constructions, i.e. an indirect object before the direct one.

Example:

[The duck] NP=subject left [the pool] NP=direct object.

A syntactic role associated in turn with subjects and objects, is that of subject or object complements. They are usually required with so-called copula or linking verbs, in relation to which they can be described as predicative complements.

Example:

[The duck] NP=subject is [a fool] NP=complement

In contrast to complements, adverbials are less close in their relation to the verb, they can be described as predicating either the verb or the entire clause, but are usually not obligatory and can be moved in the sentence rather freely.

Example:

[Last month] NP=adverbial [the duck] [left the pool].

[The duck] left the pool [last month] NP= adverbial.

Note, however, that these terms in syntax (in particular, object, complement and adverbial) are used with a variety of meanings within different theories; the terminology we use here is a rather traditional one and sometimes poses problems of fuzziness.

Semantic roles

In terms of the meaning carried by a sentence, different grammatical relations are prototypically linked to different semantic roles. So the subject typically contains the element which carries out an action (i.e. the agent), while the direct object is often the entity affected by an action (or the patient). Other semantic roles are recipient, time, place, source, goal, and instrument. Although it is generally the verb that determines which semantic roles are present, category boundaries may again be fuzzy.

Example:

The duck left [the penguin]. = patient

The duck left [the pool].  = place

Clauses and sentences

Clause and sentence can be used synonymously when dealing with simple sentences, i.e. a simple sentence contains a single independent clause. By contrast, compound sentences contain multiple clauses that are linked by way of coordinating conjunctions or parataxis. Complex sentences consist of a main clause and at least one subordinate clause.

Example:

The duck left the pool. = simple sentence

The duck left the pool, but the penguin stayed behind. = compound sentence

The duck left the pool although the penguin stayed behind. = complex sentence

Dependent clauses can be finite or non-finite: In a finite clause the verb is inflected and marked for agreement with the subject, while non-finite verbs are non-tensed and possible only in subordinate clauses. English has three basic varieties of non-inflected verb forms: participles, gerunds and infinitives.

Example:

The duck left the pool = finite main clause, the penguin staying behind = non-finite subordinate clause.

The canonical sentence form in English

The basic form of the English declarative sentence follows the canonical word order of subject - verb (- object), or SVO; this applies to main as well as to subordinate clauses. That is, in contrast to many other languages (such as German, Latin, or Persian, for example), the ordering of sentence elements in English is fixed and often makes up for case marking (in signalling syntactic roles). This property of English, together with its low number of inflectional morphemes, leads to the classification of English as an analytic, or isolating, language. There are, however, exceptions such as the fronting of certain sentence elements or special constructions (such as the passive or clefting), which are usually motivated by the discourse context, i.e. used and acceptable for pragmatic reasons.

Example:

The pool the duck left, and not the pond. = fronting of direct object

The penguin was left behind by the duck. = passive

It was the pool the duck left. = clefting

Note, however, that especially the fronting of the direct object is only marginally grammatical and, since it will usually require a lot of context, tends to occur in speaking rather than in writing.

Reading

Kortmann, Bernd (2005). English Linguistics: Essentials. Berlin: Cornelsen Verlag. Ch. 4.

Plag, Ingo et al. 2007. Introduction to English Linguistics, Berlin: Mouton, Kap.4

Advanced Reading

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