Syntax and Tree Diagram
Syntax and Tree Diagram
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Syntax and Tree Diagram
Table of Contents
Page No.
1. What is Syntax 3
2. What is Tree Diagram 4
3. Symbols used in Syntactic Analysis 5
4. References 10
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1. What is Syntax?
Syntax is generally defined as the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed
sentences in a language. The word syntax comes originally from Greek and literally
means a putting together or arrangement. Languages have rules. The rules of a language
are called the grammar. The reason for these rules is that a person needs to be able to speak
an indeterminately large number of sentences in a lifetime. The effort would be impossibly
great if each sentence had to be learnt separately. By learning the rules for connecting
words, it is possible to create an infinite number of sentences, all of which are meaningful to
a person who knows the syntax. Thus it is possible to construct many sentences that the
speaker has never heard before. Yule (2010) defines syntax as:
Syntax concerns the way that words are arranged into larger units. That is, words are
the basic unitsthe building blocksof syntactic analysis. The largest unit that
syntactic analysis usually considers is the sentence. For this reason, syntax is often
equated with the study of sentence structure.
Trask (1999) highlights the importance of syntax in these words:
The study of syntax became vastly more prominent than formerly; still today, many
linguists of a Chomskyan persuasion see syntax as the very core of language
structure.
A finite number of rules facilitate an infinite number of sentences that can be
simultaneously understood by both the speaker and the listener. In order for this to work
with any degree of success, the rules have to be precise and have to be consistently adhered
to. The grammar of a language has several components.
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Syntax and Tree Diagram
These can be described as follows:
a) The phonetics that governs the structure of sounds;
b) The morphology that governs the structure of words;
c) The syntax, which governs the structure of sentences
d) The semantics that governs the meanings of words and sentences.
Syntax in Linguistic Tree
Linguistics
Sounds of
language Grammar Meaning
Phonetics Phonology Morphology Syntax Semantics Pragmatics
2. What is Tree Diagram?
One of the most common ways to create a visual representation of syntactic structure is
through tree diagrams. Symbols (Art=article, N = noun, NP = noun phrase) are used to label
the parts of the tree to capture the hierarchical organization of those parts in the underlying
structure of phrases and sentences.
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Baker (1998) defines tree diagrams in these words:
Tree diagrams are used quite widely in scholarly works and textbooks. Their major
justification is that they provide quick and efficient representations of some
important organizational properties of individual sentences.
3. Symbols used in Syntactic Analysis
There are symbols that are used as abbreviations for syntactic categories. Examples are
S (= sentence), NP (= noun phrase), N (= noun), Art (= article), V (= verb) and
VP (= verb phrase), PP (= prepositional phrase). There are three more symbols that are
commonly used in syntactic description. Yule (2010) gives detail of these symbols as:
(i) The first is in the form of an arrow . It can be interpreted as consists of. For
example, NP Art N
(ii) The second symbol is a pair of round brackets ( ). Whatever occurs inside these
round brackets will be treated as an optional constituent. For example NP Art
(Adj) N
(iii) The third symbol is in the form of curly brackets { }.These indicate that only
one of the elements enclosed within the curly brackets must be selected. We use
these types of brackets when we want to indicate that there is a choice from two or
more constituents. For Example,
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List of symbols used in tree diagram is given below.
S = Sentence, NP = Noun phrase, PN = Proper noun
N = Noun, VP = Verb phrase, Adv = Adverb
V = Verb, Adj = Adjective, Prep = Preposition
Art = Article, Pro = Pronoun, PP = Prepositional phrase
Here are some examples of tree diagrams.
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4. References
Baker, L. (1998). English Syntax. London: The MIT Press.
Trask, R. (1999). KEY CONCEPTS IN LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS. New York: The Routledge
Publishers.
Yule, G. (2010). The Study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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