Syntax and Tree Diagram

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Syntax and Tree Diagram

Syntax and Tree Diagram

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Syntax and Tree Diagram

Table of Contents

Page No.

1. What is Syntax 3

2. What is Tree Diagram 4

3. Symbols used in Syntactic Analysis 5

4. References 10

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Syntax and Tree Diagram

1. What is Syntax?
Syntax is generally defined as the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed

sentences in a language. The word syntax comes originally from Greek and literally

means a putting together or arrangement. Languages have rules. The rules of a language

are called the grammar. The reason for these rules is that a person needs to be able to speak

an indeterminately large number of sentences in a lifetime. The effort would be impossibly

great if each sentence had to be learnt separately. By learning the rules for connecting

words, it is possible to create an infinite number of sentences, all of which are meaningful to

a person who knows the syntax. Thus it is possible to construct many sentences that the

speaker has never heard before. Yule (2010) defines syntax as:

Syntax concerns the way that words are arranged into larger units. That is, words are
the basic unitsthe building blocksof syntactic analysis. The largest unit that
syntactic analysis usually considers is the sentence. For this reason, syntax is often
equated with the study of sentence structure.

Trask (1999) highlights the importance of syntax in these words:

The study of syntax became vastly more prominent than formerly; still today, many

linguists of a Chomskyan persuasion see syntax as the very core of language

structure.

A finite number of rules facilitate an infinite number of sentences that can be

simultaneously understood by both the speaker and the listener. In order for this to work

with any degree of success, the rules have to be precise and have to be consistently adhered

to. The grammar of a language has several components.

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Syntax and Tree Diagram

These can be described as follows:

a) The phonetics that governs the structure of sounds;

b) The morphology that governs the structure of words;

c) The syntax, which governs the structure of sentences

d) The semantics that governs the meanings of words and sentences.

Syntax in Linguistic Tree

Linguistics

Sounds of
language Grammar Meaning

Phonetics Phonology Morphology Syntax Semantics Pragmatics

2. What is Tree Diagram?

One of the most common ways to create a visual representation of syntactic structure is

through tree diagrams. Symbols (Art=article, N = noun, NP = noun phrase) are used to label

the parts of the tree to capture the hierarchical organization of those parts in the underlying

structure of phrases and sentences.

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Syntax and Tree Diagram

Baker (1998) defines tree diagrams in these words:

Tree diagrams are used quite widely in scholarly works and textbooks. Their major

justification is that they provide quick and efficient representations of some

important organizational properties of individual sentences.

3. Symbols used in Syntactic Analysis

There are symbols that are used as abbreviations for syntactic categories. Examples are

S (= sentence), NP (= noun phrase), N (= noun), Art (= article), V (= verb) and

VP (= verb phrase), PP (= prepositional phrase). There are three more symbols that are

commonly used in syntactic description. Yule (2010) gives detail of these symbols as:

(i) The first is in the form of an arrow . It can be interpreted as consists of. For

example, NP Art N

(ii) The second symbol is a pair of round brackets ( ). Whatever occurs inside these

round brackets will be treated as an optional constituent. For example NP Art

(Adj) N

(iii) The third symbol is in the form of curly brackets { }.These indicate that only

one of the elements enclosed within the curly brackets must be selected. We use

these types of brackets when we want to indicate that there is a choice from two or

more constituents. For Example,

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List of symbols used in tree diagram is given below.

S = Sentence, NP = Noun phrase, PN = Proper noun

N = Noun, VP = Verb phrase, Adv = Adverb

V = Verb, Adj = Adjective, Prep = Preposition

Art = Article, Pro = Pronoun, PP = Prepositional phrase

Here are some examples of tree diagrams.

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4. References

Baker, L. (1998). English Syntax. London: The MIT Press.

Trask, R. (1999). KEY CONCEPTS IN LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS. New York: The Routledge
Publishers.

Yule, G. (2010). The Study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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