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In linguistics, syntax (/ ˈ s ɪ n t æ k s / 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 ().
In computer science, the syntax of a computer language is the rules that define the combinations of symbols that are considered to be correctly structured statements or expressions in that language. This applies both to programming languages , where the document represents source code , and to markup languages , where the document represents data.
Syntaxis is a style in writing or in rhetoric that favors complex and a poetic style syntax, in contrast to the simple sentence structures of parataxis.For example, 19th-century German academic prose, and John Milton's Paradise Lost poetry in English are notably syntactic.
Syntax is usually associated with the rules (or grammar) governing the composition of texts in a formal language that constitute the well-formed formulas of a formal system. In computer science, the term syntax refers to the rules governing the composition of well-formed expressions in a programming language. As in mathematical logic, it is ...
Syntax was recognized as the focal point of language production, in which a finite set of rules can produce an infinite number of sentences. Subsequently, morphology (i.e. the study of structure and formation of words) and phonology (i.e. the study of organization of sounds in languages) were relegated in importance.
At the lexical level, syntagmatic structure in a language is the combination of words according to the rules of syntax for that language. For example, English uses determiner + adjective + noun, e.g. the big house. Another language might use determiner + noun + adjective (Spanish la casa grande) and therefore have a different syntagmatic structure.
In linguistics, subordination (abbreviated variously SUBORD, SBRD, SUBR or SR) is a principle of the hierarchical organization of linguistic units.While the principle is applicable in semantics, morphology, and phonology, most work in linguistics employs the term "subordination" in the context of syntax, and that is the context in which it is considered here.
For instance, many nouns in English denote concrete entities, they are pluralized with the suffix -s, and they occur as subjects and objects in clauses. Many verbs denote actions or states, they are conjugated with agreement suffixes (e.g. -s of the third person singular in English), and in English they tend to show up in medial positions of ...