SYNTAX Definition & Meaning

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syntax

[sin-taks]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

noun

Linguistics.��Rarely
1. the study of the rules and patterns by which sentences and phrases are formed in a language.
2. the rules or patterns so studied.
  Some people find English syntax hard to master.
3. a presentation of these rules or patterns.
  His syntax of German is famous in the field.
4. an instance of these rules or patterns.
  The syntax of that sentence is odd.
Computers.��the grammatical rules and structural patterns governing the ordered use of appropriate words and symbols for issuing commands, writing code, etc., in a particular software application or programming language.
Logic.��
1. the branch of modern logic that studies the various kinds of signs that occur in a system and the possible arrangements of those signs, without reference to their meaning.
2. the outcome of such a study when directed upon a specified language.
a system or orderly arrangement.

syntax

/ ˈ��ɪ�Գ�æ�� /

noun

the branch of linguistics that deals with the grammatical arrangement of words and morphemes in the sentences of a language or of languages in general
the totality of facts about the grammatical arrangement of words in a language
a systematic statement of the rules governing the grammatical arrangement of words and morphemes in a language
logic a systematic statement of the rules governing the properly formed formulas of a logical system
any orderly arrangement or system

syntax

The sequence in which words are put together to form sentences. In English, the usual sequence is subject, verb, and object.

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Syntactic languages, such as English, use word order to indicate word relationships. Inflected languages (see inflection), such as Greek and Latin, use word endings and other inflections to indicate relationships.

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51�Թ� History and Origins

Origin of syntax¹

First recorded in 1565–75; short for earlier syntaxis

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51�Թ� History and Origins

Origin of syntax¹

C17: from Late Latin syntaxis, from Greek suntaxis, from suntassein to put in order, from _syn- + tassein to arrange

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

Forced to return to his traditional means of work using his memory and what he had decades of experience doing, he struggled to remember some of the syntax he coded with.

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Among birds, the Japanese tit offers the first experimental evidence for compositional syntax in any non-human species.

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Reviewer David Kipen celebrated Wallace’s “stupendously high-toned vocabulary and gleeful low-comedy diction, coupled with a sense of syntax so elongated that he can seem to go for days without surfacing.”

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"To communicate, the Africans borrowed some vocabulary from the British and incorporated their own pronunciation and syntax to form a pidgin thing. Over the generations, it became perfected and developed structure and grammar."

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His words sometimes mumbled and his syntax mangled.

From

syntality syntaxis

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