Okuzeka
Linguistics & Grammar vocabulary · Syntax

Syntax

Meaning in linguistics & grammar, with examples

/ˈsɪntæks/nounCore term

In linguistics & grammar, syntax means: The study of how words are combined into phrases and sentences, and the rules of a language that decide which word orders and structures are possible.

In Turkish: sözdizimi, sentaks

How it is used

Used for the field and for the sentence rules of one language (English syntax, the syntax of questions). Programmers use the same word for the rules of a programming language. The adjective is syntactic.

Example sentences

  1. English syntax requires a subject in almost every sentence, so we say 'It is raining', not 'Is raining'.

  2. Our syntax module uses tree diagrams to show how phrases are built.

Common collocations

  • English syntax
  • syntactic structure
  • syntactic analysis
  • theory of syntax
  • word orderThe usual order in which words and sentence parts such as subject, verb and object appear in a language, for example subject-verb-object in English.
  • phraseA group of words that works as one unit in a sentence but usually has no subject-verb pair, such as 'the old library' or 'in the morning'.
  • clauseA group of words that contains a subject and a verb and forms a sentence or part of a sentence, such as 'because it was raining'.
  • tree diagramA drawing that shows the structure of a sentence or word as branches, with each phrase and its parts shown as nodes connected by lines.
  • constituentA word or group of words that functions as a single unit in the structure of a sentence, such as a noun phrase or a prepositional phrase.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Syntax

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: