SYNTAX

SURYAKANCANA UNIVERSITY
ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM

SYNTAX
Dr. Jauhar Helmie, S.S., M.Hum.
SYNTAX
Linguistics studies language as a system
which consists of some branches such as
morphology, phonology, syntax,
semantics and pragmatics.

Syntax is one of the branch of Linguistics

and the most important aspect of English
grammar. The word ‘syntax’ originates
from the Greek words συν (syn), meaning
“co-“ or “together”, and τάξις (taxis),
meaning “sequence, order, or
arrangement”.
 01 According to Dictionary

“Syntax is the arrangement of words into

phrases and phrases into clause and
clause into sentences.”

DEFINITION 02
According to Campsal (2006:1)

“Syntax refers to the way words are put

together in a group to create meaning as
phrases, clauses or as a sentence.”

According to McManis, Stollenwerk and

03 Zheng-Sheng in their book Language
File

“Syntax is the study of the structure of

sentences”.
What we learn The syntactic functions

in Syntax? a contain:
1. Subject
2. Predicate
3. Object, and

In Syntax, we learn about

4. Complement

the syntactic categories

the syntactic structure
containing the syntactic b consist of:
1.Nouns, noun phrases,

functions and syntactic 2.Verbs, verb phrases,

3.Adjectives, adjective phrases,

categories.
4.Adverb, adverbial phrases
5.Preposition, and prepositional phrases.

c there are also syntactic units;

it consists of:
1.word 2. phrase
3. clause 4. sentence
In Linguistics In English
1. syntax is the study of In English we cannot say
rules or patterned words randomly.
relation that governs
the way the words in For examples:
sentence are arranged we have words: buy, a, nice,
2. some grammarians book, I
say that syntax is the we arrange them: a book
grammatical buy I nice
arrangement of words
SYNTAX we should arrange: I buy a
in sentences or a nice book
systemic orderly
arrangement
 Arrange these words

1.Beautiful, 2. table, 3. european, 4. them,

a, woman. small, the, any, opera, Ryan, made,
study. great. happy.

5. somber, 6. Ira, Rina, 7. soft, a, on 8. my, shoes,

evening, threw, ball, the head, roommates,
that, sky. the. pat. tennis.
Word
Word is a unit of language that represents a concept
which can be expressively communicated with
meaning. According to the writer, word is the small unit
of language which has meaning. A word consists of one
or more morphemes which are linked more or less
tightly together, and has a phonetic value.

A word is a symbol for an idea and consequently has a

specific denotation. It may also connote special
qualities and associations which enrich or degrade the
meaning.
Word Class
In English the different
kinds of word, such us
noun, verb, and
preposition, are called
word class or sometimes
called as part of speech.

There are two kinds of

word class:
1. Lexical Group
2. Function Group
 Noun
01 The woman is beautiful.

Verb
02 The child slept.

Lexical Group Preposition

03 He stayed at home.

Adjective
04 She looked tired.

Adverb
05 They walked slowly.
 Function Group
a. Article (Determiner): The baby is crying.
b. Auxiliary verb (Vaux): They Should come on time
c. Conjunction:
1. Coordinative:
My mother and I will go to Jakarta.
2. Sub-ordinative:
He told me that he would come early.
d. Degree word: He is very kind to me.
e. Interjection: wow! It is great.
The first group, lexical
group, can be the head
word of a phrase, and
the second groups are
cannot.

For examples:
 01 A thin book

Now, try to 02 A clever boy

find the
03 Three green houses
head!
04 Very quickly

05 Will go
3. * a book thick (incorrect)

4. * go will (incorrect)
 Phrases

The definition by Oxford According to Sihombing and Burton

Advanced Learner’s Dictionary
(2000:988), “Phrase is a group of
words without a verb, especially
one that forms part of a
sentence.”
(2007:59), “A phrase is two or
more words in sequence intended
to have meaning, less completely
predicated than a sentence
because it has no subject and verb,
such as behind the City Hall.”
A phrase may consist of one word or more than one
word.
1. The one word phrase is the main word of the phrase.
2. The main word is called the Head Word (WH).
3. The Head Word (WH) can be added by one or more
modifiers.
4. Modifiers give more information about the Head
Word (HW).
5. Modifiers come before the head is called Pre-
modifiers.
6. Modifiers come after the head is called Post-
modifiers
For example:
It can be concluded that:
From the three of three diagrams showed that the lexical
group can be used as the head word and both pre-
modifiers and Post-modifiers.
Based on the Head Word (HW), there are five kinds of
phrases:
1. Noun Phrase as we know as NP
2. Verb Phrase as we know as VP
3. Prepositional Phrase as we know as PP
4. Adjective Phrase as know as AP
5. Adverb Phrase as know as AdP
 According to Current English Grammar
book by Chalker (1984:46), “Noun
phrase is a word or words functioning
in a sentence like a noun.” It usually
consists of a noun (or verbal noun),
alone or expanded. The noun is said to
be ‘head’ of the phrase.
Noun Phrase
“The noun phrase is a group of words
that ends with a noun. It can contain
determiners” (the, a, this, etc),
adjectives, adverbs, and nouns. (Pyle
and Munoz Toefl, 1991:44).
For example: The house, an apple, and
two shoes. (Shows a count noun that
can be counted)
The noun phrase has four major components, occurring in
a fixed order:
1.The determinative, the constituent which determiners the
reference of the noun phrase in its linguistic or situational
context;
2.Premodification, which comprises all the modifying or
describing constituent before the head, other than
determiner;
3.The head, around which other the constituents cluster;
and
4.Postmodification, those, which comprise all the
modifying constituents, placed after the head.
 Noun Phrase

noun or pronouns characteristically functions

as the head word of noun phrases. The
following are examples of noun phrase (NP).
Table of NP examples
The following
are the three
diagram of
the noun
phrase based
on the table: