SYNTAX

Dr. Comfort Pratt

DEFINITION

The study of the structure of sentences.

 

Categories of words

Words in a language belong to different categories.

Lexical Categories

Non-lexical or Functional Categories

PHRASE, CLAUSE, SENTENCE

PhraseA syntactic unit that is formed by combining words together, which has a word of a specific category acting as its head.

Ex: the man on the moon has a tattoo on his face

Types of phrases Noun phrase

these surreys Verb phrase

perfectly represent Adjective phrase

very elegant Prepositional phrase

in the past

ClauseAny syntactic unit which includes a verb and the elements that accompany it.

Ex: Some grouches in the squadron rebelled.The explorers saw a lake.

SentenceThe largest independent unit of

syntactic analysis.Ex: 1. The coachman left the surrey in the

driveway and the guests went in.

2. The officials blew their whistles when they apprehended the thieves.

Coordination

Subordination

Sentence Structure