The Language of Syntax

The introductory textbook chapters on the study of syntax, which studies the structure of sentences and how they create meaning provided a more thorough scientific analysis of the basic lessons we learn of English in elementary and high school. Carnie introduces the study of syntax through describing generative grammar, in which sentences are formed by a subconscious set of procedures, how parts of speech are determined by a word’s place in the sentence and its morphology, and lastly the concepts of constituency and hierarchy trees.

Overall, there were three main ideas that fascinated me throughout our readings. The first chapter articulated this idea that parents do not teach grammar to their children and that children will acquire language without instruction. At first, I was not fully convinced by this idea because if this idea is true, then what is the point of teaching grammar is elementary school which is often times called grammar school. The idea that there is a universal grammar that is innate initially seems odd because it articulates a conflict with the biological evolution of individuals.

The second idea that was interesting is that parts of speech should not be based on semantics. The most compelling argument for this refutation is that one can know the part of speech of a word without knowing the meaning such as in the sentence “ The tumberful tymiger sporketed at the shuofle.” Most humans would argue that tumberful is an adjective, tymiger is a noun, sporketed is a verb, shuofle is a noun, without knowing the meaning of the words and therefore, semantics is not the best way to explain parts of speech. The linguistic approach to parts of speech is utilizing the derivational suffixes, inflectional suffixes and the syntactic distribution which while most elaborate is a more accurate description of what part of speech a word is.

The third idea that provided a new insight into the analysis of syntax is through the concepts of constituency and hierarchical structure. Constituency is the  concept that a sentence is formed through a constituent which is a group of words that functions together as a unit. Hierarchical structure is how constituents in a sentence are embedded inside of other constituents. The idea that a sentence can have multiple meanings in the way it is read can be clarified through the use of a tree structure is fascinating to me because it is a scientific approach in how to analyze the construction of sentences.

This introductory reading provided me with some concrete sense of how syntax works while also elaborating on some insights that I want to look into more.