Syntax

In linguistics, syntax (/ˈsɪntæks/)[1][2] is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency),[3] agreement, the nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning (semantics). There are numerous approaches to syntax that differ in their central assumptions and goals.

Part of a series on
Linguistics
Outline History Index
General linguistics Diachronic Lexicography Morphology Phonology Pragmatics Semantics Syntax Syntax–semantics interface Typology
Applied linguistics Acquisition Anthropological Applied Computational Discourse analysis Documentation Forensic History of linguistics Neurolinguistics Philosophy of language Phonetics Psycholinguistics Sociolinguistics Text and corpus linguistics Translating and interpreting Writing systems
Theoretical frameworks Formalist Glossematics Constituency Dependency Distributionalism Generative Functional Prague school Functional discourse grammar Cognitive Usage-based Systemic functional Structuralism
Topics Autonomy of syntax Compositionality Conservative/innovative forms Descriptivism Etymology Iconicity Internet linguistics LGBT linguistics Origin of language Orthography Philosophy of linguistics Prescriptivism Second-language acquisition Theory of language
Portal
v t e