ENGLISH SYNTAX

By
Ramda Marfalen
 ENGLISH SYNTAX

• Linguistics is scientific study of language

• Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols
used for human communication.
• As a system language has two system
- System of Sound
• - System of Meaning
Where is the position of Syntax?
 FORM, LANGUAGE LANGUAGE INTERDICIPLINARY VIEW
MEANING, UNITS SCIENCE
FUNCTION

SEMANTICS

SENTENCE SYNTAX
FORM/
LOGICAL
MEANING
MORPHEME MORPHOLOGY LINGUISTICS

FORM PHONEME PHONOLOGY

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Linguistic Unit and the Sentence
• Syntactic descriptions have traditionally taken the
sentence as their starting point and the smaller units
being primarily regarded as ‘building-blocks’ of sentences.

• Sentence consits of string of words, in sequence, and

meaningful.
• Sentences are interpreted not as strings of individual words
but as sequence of groups of words and between them exist
certain relations called sentence structure
e.g word order.

* He wanted to marry Jane. * He wanted jane to marry.

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Constituents
• The parts into which a sentence can be
segmented are the constituents of the sentence.
• Immediate Constituents (IC) refers to those
constituents which together form a higher-order
constituent.
– Jane wants a cake
a and cake are the IC’s of a cake
wants and a cake are the I.C’s of wants a cake
Jane and wants a cake are the IC of the sentence
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Rankscale and Rankshift

• Rankscale is the hierarchy of units of linguistic

description in which morphemes function as
constituents of words, words function as constituent
of phrases, and phrases as constituent of sentences.
We’ve made some minor corrections
Sentence
some minor corrections
Phrase Corrections
Word
Correct-ion-s
Morpheme
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Rankscale and Rankshift

• Rankshift : unit of given rank functions as a

constituent of a unit of the same rank or even
lower down the rankscale, e.g. Sentences function
as constituent of other sentences, phrase to other
phrases, word to other words, etc.
1. I know Peter is in the army  setentence
2. At the corner of the street  phrase
3. Treetop - gorldsmith - Blackbird  word
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Functions and Categories

• There is a distinction between linguistic units as

constituents of larger structures and as linguistics
objects in their own right; i.e Function and Category.
Function refers to a linguistic unit viewed as an element
that plays its role in a larger linguistic structure.

Category refers to a linguistic unit viewed as something

that has individual charateristics which it shares with
other units of the same kind
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Functions and Categories

John took a walk

The unit of John and a walk viewed individually are

Noun; so they belong to the same category or word class

The unit of John and a walk viewed as constituents of

the sentence, both John and a walk belong to different
function. John function as Subject and a walk function
as Object