Syntax

Syntax is the branch of linguistics that studies sentence structure.  In this section, it is important to remember the parts of speech in order to classify sentences and identify their parts.

Parts of Speech

• Nouns: a noun is a word that names a person, place, thing, or idea. Example: chair, dog, Anna.
• Verbs: they are the action words in a sentence that describe what the subject is doing. Example: walk, eat, write.
• Adjectives: it is a word that describes or modifies a noun or pronoun. Example: beautiful, smart, old, little.
• Adverbs: it is a word that modifies or describes a verb, adjective or another adverb. Examples: slowly, tomorrow, happy.
• Prepositions: it is a word used to link nouns, pronouns, or phrases to other words within a sentence. Examples: of, with, by, in, above.
• Pronouns: it is a word that takes the place of a noun. Examples: me, they, whom, us, her.
• Articles:  they define whether something is specific or unspecific. The articles are the words a, an, and the.
• Conjunctions: it is used to connect words, phrases, clauses, or sentences. Examples: and, yet, until, although.
• Interjections: it is a word that demonstrates the emotion or feeling of the author. Examples: wow! ouch! oh, dear!

English has fixed Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) word order. Therefore, the sentence The children took all the apples. is correct (grammatical) but the sentence *Took all the apples the children. is ungrammatical.

Using the rules of syntax, we combine words into phrases and phrases into sentences. A phrase may consist of one word or a group of words. The main types of phrases are the noun phrase, the verb phrase, the adjective phrase, the adverb phrase, and the prepositional phrase.

Types of Sentences

The majority of linguistics makes a distinction between functional and formal sentences:

• Functional: it is from the point of view of their function. This type of sentence is divided into statements, questions, commands, and exclamations.
• Formal: they are declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamative sentences.

Another classification is simple, compound, and complex sentences.

• Simple: it is a complete thought or idea. Example: She reads a book.
• Compound: two independent clauses joined by coordinating conjunctions (for, and, yet...). Example: She is reading a book and her brother is dancing.
• Complex: one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses. joined by subordinating conjunctions (after, before, until...). Example: While she is reading, her brother is dancing in the living room.