syntax

   HELLO GUYS…!!! Hihihi…allhamdulillah we can still meet again and I can also continue our lesson. Yesterday, we had learnt about morphology right ? as we know that morphology is a study about morphemes. But now, we will continue our lesson about syntax.  What is syntax ?mmm… is it a food :D ? ahahhaha..i’m not sure about that however I’m hungry now hihihi,,,british linguistics often use the term ‘grammar’ for the same level of language  that is reffered to as ‘syntax’ by many american.  So, syntax is a study about how words combine into large units  and with it’s conection to others words, exactly like pharase,clause and sentence which will be explaned in the below.

The phrase

The pharase is a group of words  which funtions as a unit and with exception of the verb pharase it self,does not contain a finite verbs. Cosider this definition by examining a few sentence :

The little boy sat in the corner.

ð  We  can replace ‘the little boy’ by ‘he’ an in the corner’ by ‘there’. Notice that in both examples we replace a number of words by one. It is thus clear that certain groups of words have internal coherence in that they function as a unit.

We have also  said that a pharase does not contain a finite verb, so now we shall look at what a finite verb is.

A finite verb is one that can take as its subject a pronoun such as ‘I’. ‘we’, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’, ‘they’. Thus we can have :

·         I see

·         He sees

·         They saw

But not :

·         I seeing

·         He to see

·         We seen

And we can say that the present participle ( that is, forms such as ‘seeing’), the ifenitive(that is, form such as ‘to see’) and the past participle (that is, forms such as ‘seen’) are non finite verb forms. Only non finite verbs forms can occur in pharase :

·         Bending low, he walked awkwardly into small room

·         Seen from this angel,the mountains look blue.

   There are five commonly occuring types of phrase in English,namely : noun pharase, adjective phrase, verb pharase, adverb phrase and preposition phrase.

1.       A noun phrase is a group of words with a noun as it is a heaword. There can be up to three noun phrase  in a simple sentence suc as :

The young man threw the old dog a bone.

Well, the noun pharase of that sentence are the young man, the old dog and a bone

2.       An adjective phrase is a group of word which modifies a noun. These words can be either attrributive (that is, usually preceding but occsionlly following a noun ), for example :

The child, laughing happily, ran out of the house.

ð  Laughing happily as adjective phrase.

Or predicative(that, following a verb) ,like :

The letter was unbelievably rude.

3.       A verb phrase is a group of words with a verb as headword. Verb phrases can be either finite :

He has been singging

Or non ifinite :

To have sung

In simple sentence we can find only ifinite verb phrase like : he may be following us.

But for complex sentence we can find several finite, like: when he was invited to give  lecture, he was told that all reasonable expenses would be refunded.

4.       An adverb phrase is a group of words which function like an adverbs, it often uses the role of telling us when, where, why or how an event occurred :

He ran very quickly.

He almost always arrives on time

5.       A preposition phrase is a group of words that begins with a preposition :

He arrived by plane

We are on very good terms.

The clause

   A clause is a group of words which contain a finite verb but which can not occur in isolation, that is, a clause constituses only part of a sentence. In each complex sentence, we have at least  two clause : a main clause and at least one subordinate or dependent clause. For examples :

He belived that the earth was round

He arrived as the clock wassriking

He belived or he arrived are as main clause.

The following types of subordinate clause are found:

1.       A noun clause is a group of words containing a finite verb and functioning like a noun :

He said that he was tired.

What you said was not true.

The fact that the earth moves round the sun is well know.

2.       An adjective clasue is often called a ‘relative clause’ because it usually relates back to a noun whose meaning it modifies :

The dog which won the competition is an alastian.

The man who taught my brother frenchis now the headmaster.

Note: when an adjective/ relative clause begins with ‘that/which/whom’ and is followed by a subject, the subordinator can be omitted :

The book (that) jhon bought is missing.

The man (whom) we met was my uncle.

3.       An adverbial clauses functions like an adverb in giving information about when, where, why, how or if an action occurred :

When he arrived we were all sleeping.

Put it where we can all see it.

He put it away as quietly as he could.

Adverbial clauses are often mobile :

When he arrived we were all  sleeping

We were all sleeping when he arrived

The sentence

    According by bloomfield in 1933 “each sentence ia an independent linguistics form, not included by virtue of any grammattical construction in any larger linguistic form.

    An even simpler categorisation of ‘sentence’ can be applied to the written medium in that we can define a sentence as ; that lingustics unit which begins with a capital letter and ends with a  full stop’. Both these definitions of ‘sentence’ are useful but it will be worth our while to study further both the types of sentences that occur in English and their internal construction.

    Sentences can be devided into four sub-types :

1.       declarative sentences make statements or assertions :

                 I shall arrive at three.

                 Peace has its victories

                 We must not forget that date

2.       imperative sentences give orders, make requests and usually haveno overt subject :

 come here.

                    Don’t do that

                    Don’t walk on the grass

3.    interrogative sentences for ask queations :

                    did you see your brother yesterday ?

                    can’t you hear that awful noise ?

   note : there are two types of interrogative queastion, those which expect the answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’:

                    can you sing ?

and those which begin with the question words what, where, When, which, who, whom, why or how and which expect an answer other than yes or no.

4.    exclamatory sentences are used to express surprise, alarm, indignation or a strong opinion.for example :

     he’s going to win !

                   you can’t be seriuos !

                   what a fool I was !

                   I have never heard such rubbish in all my life!

   Sentences can also be classified as being either major or minor. All examples above are major in that they contain finite verbs while minor sentences do not contain finite verbs and they are frequently found in colloquial speech :

Got a match ?

Not likely!

Just a minute!

In proverbiar utterances :

Out of sight, out of mind.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

And in advertising :

Always a head of the times.

The cheapest and best.

   Apart from the above categorisation of sentences, we often find it useful to distinguish between sentences which are ‘simple’, ‘compound’ or ‘complex’.

Simple sentences contain only one finite verb :

·         We must be not say such things.

Compound sentences consist of two or more simple sentences liked by the conjuctions and, but, so, either, or, neither, nor, or, then, and yet :

·         He ran out and  fell over the suitcase.

·         I went to market yesterday and bought something.

Complex sentences consist of one simple sentence and one or more subordinate ( or dependent) clauses. In the following sentence:

·         She became queen when her father died because she was the eldest child.

ð  We have main clauses : she became queen

ð  And two subordinate clauses : when her father died and because she was the eldest child.

Compound complex sentences is a combination of complex sentences joined by conjuctions :

·         I saw him when he arrived the first time but I didn’t see him when he came again.

   Wehave looked at the types of sentences that can occur and now, focus in the internal structure of a sentence. The basic pattern of the simple English sentences is :

(adjunct) (subject) predicate (object) (complement) (adjenct)

usually give as :

(A)(B)P(O)(C)(A)

Where only the predicate is essential and where the adjunct is mobile.  A few simple examples will show how the formula works.

Such sentences as :

   The man disappeared.

    The poor young woman died.

Those sentences divide into two parts, the blue is a noun  and  the red  is a verb.

We can summarise the above data with examples as follows :

P => go

PA => go quietly

SP => john slept

SPA => john slept quietly.

PO => eat your breakfast.

SPO => john ate his breakfast.

SPOA=> john te his breakfast quickly

SPC => john is a fool

ASPC => at times john is a fool

SPOC => jhon called his brother a fool

SAPOC => jhon often called his brother a fool.

for easy to understand about syntax you can watch this video bung...  Those explanation about syntax. If you have question, you can ask on the blow and perhaps, you can also give me advice. Thank you  have read my blog, I hope it can help you. See you for next time hihihi :D