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Everything about Syntax
Study of the formation of composite units
In linguistics, syntax is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form well-formed larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns in this area of linguistics include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), agreement, cross-linguistic variation, and the relationship between structure and meaning (semantics). Diverse approaches, such as generative grammar and functional grammar, have been proposed as ways to model the human mental grammars that form and interpret sentences. Wikipedia →
🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path
- Read the overview: SyntaxA 5-minute orientation
- Skim a recent paper: Measuring residents’ perceptions of city streets to inform better street planning through deep learning and space syntaxInfluential work since 2022
- Pick up a classic book: English exercises adapted to Murray's English grammarThe most-reprinted book on the subject
- Read the landmark paper: Coronary artery bypass graft surgery versus percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with three-vessel disease and left main coronary disease: 5-year follow-up of the randomised, clinical SYNTAX trialCited 1,523 times
- Go sideways: SubcategorizationA closely related topic
- Go sideways: X-bar theoryA closely related topic
📖 Definitions
Noun A set of rules that govern how words are combined to form phrases and sentences.
Noun The formal rules of formulating the statements of a computer language.
Noun The study of the structure of phrases, sentences, and language.
🗂️ The subject at a glance
🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)
Coronary artery bypass graft surgery versus percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with three-vessel disease and left main coronary disease: 5-year follow-up of the randomised, clinical SYNTAX trial
Neural Syntax: Cell Assemblies, Synapsembles, and Readers
Language, music, syntax and the brain
Neural mechanisms of language comprehension: Challenges to syntax
Anatomical and clinical characteristics to guide decision making between coronary artery bypass surgery and percutaneous coronary intervention for individual patients: development and validation of SYNTAX score II
Base-resolution models of transcription-factor binding reveal soft motif syntax
Syntax and semantics of questions
Musical syntax is processed in Broca's area: an MEG study
🆕 Influential since 2022
Measuring residents’ perceptions of city streets to inform better street planning through deep learning and space syntax
Unveiling the potential of space syntax approach for revitalizing historic urban areas: A case study of Yushan Historic District, China
Integrating restorative perception into urban street planning: A framework using street view images, deep learning, and space syntax
Vulnerability Detection by Learning From Syntax-Based Execution Paths of Code
On the interplay of syntax and prosody in the constitution of turn-constructional units and turns in conversation
📚 Books worth reading
English exercises adapted to Murray's English grammarLindley Murray · 1798
Syntactic structuresNoam Chomsky · 1900
A practical grammarS. W. Clark · 1847
Aspects of the Theory of SyntaxNoam Chomsky · 1965
Understanding SyntaxMaggie Tallerman · 2011
A modern English grammar on historical principlesOtto Jespersen · 1909
Analysing SentencesNoel Burton-Roberts · 2012
Petite syntaxe de l'ancien françaisLucien Foulet · 1919
Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.
🔗 Related topics
- Subcategorization In linguistics, subcategorization denotes the ability/necessity for lexical items (usually verbs) to require/allow the presence and types of the syntactic…
- X-bar theory In linguistics, X-bar theory is a model of phrase structure and a theory of syntactic category formation that proposes a universal schema for how phrases…
- Immediate constituent analysis In linguistics, Immediate Constituent Analysis (ICA) is a syntactic theory which focuses on the hierarchical structure of sentences by isolating and identifying…
- Predicate (grammar) The term predicate is used in two ways in linguistics and its subfields. The first defines a predicate as everything in a standard declarative sentence…
- Phrase In grammar, a phrase — called an expression in some contexts — is a group of one or more words acting as a grammatical unit. It can be used within a sentence…
- Lucien Tesnière Lucien Tesnière (French: [lysjɛ̃ tɛnjɛʁ]; May 13, 1893 – December 6, 1954) was a prominent and influential French linguist. He was born in Mont-Saint-Aignan…
- Phrase structure rules Phrase structure rules are a type of rewrite rule used to describe a given language's syntax and are closely associated with the early stages of transformationa…
- Dependency grammar Dependency grammar (DG) is a class of modern grammatical theories that are all based on the dependency relation (as opposed to the constituency relation…