In linguistics , syntax ( / ˈ s ɪ n t æ k s / SIN -taks ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences . Central concerns of syntax include word order , grammatical relations , hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency ), agreement , the nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning ( semantics ). There are numerous approaches to syntax that differ in their central assumptions and goals.
35-512: Mawmluh Cave ( Khasi : Krem Mawmluh ) is a maze cave in the state of Meghalaya in northeast India . At 7.2 km in length, it is the fourth longest cave in the Indian subcontinent. The cave, which has several entrances, has formed at the junction between an early Eocene dolomite and a sandstone formation. It contains numerous stalactites , stalagmites , columns and drapes, collectively termed speleothems . In respect of this site being
70-825: A challenge with regard to classifying the Khasic languages . Some dialects of Khasi include: In addition, Pnar , Maram (including Langrin) and Lyngngam have been listed as types of Khasi, although more recent studies seem to indicate that these are sister languages to Khasi, and that Khasi actually began as a marginal Pnar dialect. Bhoi, from Nongpoh , and Nonglung from Umsning, in Ri Bhoi District , differ substantially from Standard Khasi in their word order . They are distinct enough from Standard Khasi to be sometimes considered separate languages, with Bhoi sometimes classified as intermediate between Khasi and Pnar, and Nonglung being part of Mnar, variously classified as
105-450: A framework known as grammaire générale , first expounded in 1660 by Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot in a book of the same title , dominated work in syntax: as its basic premise the assumption that language is a direct reflection of thought processes and so there is a single most natural way to express a thought. However, in the 19th century, with the development of historical-comparative linguistics , linguists began to realize
140-399: A number of various topics that a syntactic theory is often designed to handle. The relation between the topics is treated differently in different theories, and some of them may not be considered to be distinct but instead to be derived from one another (i.e. word order can be seen as the result of movement rules derived from grammatical relations). One basic description of a language's syntax
175-467: A reference, and/or with a substantial contribution to the development of geological sciences through history.' Khasi language Khasi ( Ka Ktien Khasi ) is an Austroasiatic language with just over a million speakers in north-east India, primarily the Khasi people in the state of Meghalaya . It has associate official status in some districts of this state. The closest relatives of Khasi are
210-580: A type of War or of Pnar. On the other hand, Sohra and War Khasi are lexically very similar. The Sohra dialect is taken as Standard Khasi, as it was the first dialect to be written in Latin and Bengali scripts by the British. While Standard Khasi is spoken by majority in Shillong, it is in turn significantly different from the other Shillong dialects (eight at most) which form a dialect continuum across
245-435: Is a categorial grammar that adds in partial tree structures to the categories. Theoretical approaches to syntax that are based upon probability theory are known as stochastic grammars . One common implementation of such an approach makes use of a neural network or connectionism . Functionalist models of grammar study the form–function interaction by performing a structural and a functional analysis. Generative syntax
280-659: Is also present in Welsh alphabet. Note A local legend tells of how the Khasi people received their script from God, and that subsequently the Khasi people lost their script in a great flood. In 2017, it was reported that there is evidence of an undeciphered script , currently stored at the Kamarupa Anusandhan Samity Library in Guwahati , Assam, that is considered to be Khasi in origin. Khasi
315-934: Is an Austroasiatic language and has its distinct features of a large number of consonant conjuncts, with prefixing and infixing. The order of elements in a Khasi noun phrase is (Case marker)-(Demonstrative)-(Numeral)-(Classifier)-(Article)-Noun-(Adjective)-(Prepositional phrase)-(Relative clause), as can be seen from the following examples: ar two tylli CL ki PL sim bird ar tylli ki sim two CL PL bird 'two birds' kato that: FEM ka FEM kynthei girl kaba FEM -relative wan come mynnin yesterday kato ka kynthei kaba wan mynnin that:FEM FEM girl FEM-relative come yesterday 'that girl who came yesterday' ka FEM kmie Syntax The word syntax comes from Ancient Greek roots: σύνταξις "coordination", which consists of σύν syn , "together", and τάξις táxis , "ordering". The field of syntax contains
350-413: Is concerned. (For a detailed and critical survey of the history of syntax in the last two centuries, see the monumental work by Giorgio Graffi (2001). ) There are a number of theoretical approaches to the discipline of syntax. One school of thought, founded in the works of Derek Bickerton , sees syntax as a branch of biology, since it conceives of syntax as the study of linguistic knowledge as embodied in
385-463: Is defined as an element that requires two NPs (its subject and its direct object) to form a sentence. That is notated as (NP/(NP\S)), which means, "A category that searches to the right (indicated by /) for an NP (the object) and generates a function (equivalent to the VP) which is (NP\S), which in turn represents a function that searches to the left for an NP and produces a sentence." Tree-adjoining grammar
SECTION 10
#1732779809407420-443: Is the performance–grammar correspondence hypothesis by John A. Hawkins , who suggests that language is a non-innate adaptation to innate cognitive mechanisms. Cross-linguistic tendencies are considered as being based on language users' preference for grammars that are organized efficiently and on their avoidance of word orderings that cause processing difficulty. Some languages, however, exhibit regular inefficient patterning such as
455-519: Is the sequence in which the subject (S), verb (V), and object (O) usually appear in sentences. Over 85% of languages usually place the subject first, either in the sequence SVO or the sequence SOV . The other possible sequences are VSO , VOS , OVS , and OSV , the last three of which are rare. In most generative theories of syntax, the surface differences arise from a more complex clausal phrase structure, and each order may be compatible with multiple derivations. However, word order can also reflect
490-542: Is the study of syntax within the overarching framework of generative grammar . Generative theories of syntax typically propose analyses of grammatical patterns using formal tools such as phrase structure grammars augmented with additional operations such as syntactic movement . Their goal in analyzing a particular language is to specify rules which generate all and only the expressions which are well-formed in that language. In doing so, they seek to identify innate domain-specific principles of linguistic cognition, in line with
525-613: The Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India . A sizeable number of books have been published in Khasi, including novels, poetry, religious works, school textbooks and non-fiction. The most famous Khasi poet is U Soso Tham (1873–1940), whose death is commemorated annually as a regional holiday in the state of Meghalaya. Khasi has a good presence on the internet, including blogs and several online newspapers. Khasi has significant dialectal variation, and this presents
560-500: The Grammaire générale . ) Syntactic categories were identified with logical ones, and all sentences were analyzed in terms of "subject – copula – predicate". Initially, that view was adopted even by the early comparative linguists such as Franz Bopp . The central role of syntax within theoretical linguistics became clear only in the 20th century, which could reasonably be called the "century of syntactic theory" as far as linguistics
595-679: The Khasi Hills and Jaintia Hills regions. There are also small Khasi-speaking communities in neighbouring states of India, the largest of which is in Assam : 34,600 people. There is also a very small number of speakers in Bangladesh. Khasi has been an associate official language of some districts within Meghalaya since 2005, and as of 2012, was no longer considered endangered by UNESCO . There are demands to include this language to
630-795: The ' GSSP of the youngest unit of the geologic time scale associated with dramatic climate changes with implications on human civilisation' the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS)' included the 'GSSP of the Meghalayan Stage in the Mawmluh Cave' in its assemblage of 100 'geological heritage sites' around the world in a listing published in October 2022. The organisation defines an 'IUGS Geological Heritage Site' as 'a key place with geological elements and/or processes of international scientific relevance, used as
665-447: The VO languages Chinese , with the adpositional phrase before the verb, and Finnish , which has postpositions, but there are few other profoundly exceptional languages. More recently, it is suggested that the left- versus right-branching patterns are cross-linguistically related only to the place of role-marking connectives ( adpositions and subordinators ), which links the phenomena with
700-455: The capital region. This section discusses mainly the phonology of Standard Khasi as spoken in and around the capital city, Shillong. Khasi, mainly spoken in Meghalaya, is surrounded by unrelated languages: Assamese to the north and east, Sylheti to the south (both Indo-Aryan languages ), Garo (a Tibeto-Burman language ) to the west, and a plethora of other Tibeto-Burman languages including Manipuri , Mizo and Bodo . Although over
735-593: The course of time, language change has occurred, Khasi retains some distinctive features: Before British colonization, some of the Khasi Syiems (Royals) used to keep official records and communicate with one another on paper primarily using the Bengali script. William Carey wrote the language with the Bengali script between 1813 and 1838. A large number of Khasi books were written in the Bengali script, including
SECTION 20
#1732779809407770-562: The famous book Ka Niyom Jong Ki Khasi or The Religion of the Khasis , which is an important work on the Khasi religion. The Welsh missionary , Thomas Jones , arrived in Sohra on June 22, 1841, and proceeded to write down the local language in the Latin script . As a result, the modified Latin alphabet of the language has a few similarities with the Welsh alphabet . The first journal in Khasi
805-504: The framework of generative grammar, which holds that syntax depends on a genetic endowment common to the human species. In that framework and in others, linguistic typology and universals have been primary explicanda. Alternative explanations, such as those by functional linguists , have been sought in language processing . It is suggested that the brain finds it easier to parse syntactic patterns that are either right- or left- branching but not mixed. The most-widely held approach
840-456: The human mind . Other linguists (e.g., Gerald Gazdar ) take a more Platonistic view since they regard syntax to be the study of an abstract formal system . Yet others (e.g., Joseph Greenberg ) consider syntax a taxonomical device to reach broad generalizations across languages. Syntacticians have attempted to explain the causes of word-order variation within individual languages and cross-linguistically. Much of such work has been done within
875-423: The left (indicated by \) for an NP (the element on the left) and outputs a sentence (the element on the right)." Thus, the syntactic category for an intransitive verb is a complex formula representing the fact that the verb acts as a function word requiring an NP as an input and produces a sentence level structure as an output. The complex category is notated as (NP\S) instead of V. The category of transitive verb
910-651: The other languages in the Khasic group of the Shillong Plateau ; these include Pnar , Lyngngam and War . Khasi is written using the Latin script . In the first half of the 19th century, attempts to write Khasi in Bengali-Assamese script met with little success. Khasi is natively spoken by 1,038,000 people in India (as of 2011). It is the first language of one-third of the population of Meghalaya , or 997,000, and its speakers are mostly found in
945-476: The place of that division, he positioned the verb as the root of all clause structure. Categorial grammar is an approach in which constituents combine as function and argument , according to combinatory possibilities specified in their syntactic categories . For example, other approaches might posit a rule that combines a noun phrase (NP) and a verb phrase (VP), but CG would posit a syntactic category NP and another NP\S , read as "a category that searches to
980-551: The same type. The Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini , from c. 4th century BC in Ancient India , is often cited as an example of a premodern work that approaches the sophistication of a modern syntactic theory since works on grammar had been written long before modern syntax came about. In the West, the school of thought that came to be known as "traditional grammar" began with the work of Dionysius Thrax . For centuries,
1015-453: The semantic mapping of sentences. Dependency grammar is an approach to sentence structure in which syntactic units are arranged according to the dependency relation, as opposed to the constituency relation of phrase structure grammars . Dependencies are directed links between words. The (finite) verb is seen as the root of all clause structure and all the other words in the clause are either directly or indirectly dependent on this root (i.e.
1050-527: The semantics or function of the ordered elements. Another description of a language considers the set of possible grammatical relations in a language or in general and how they behave in relation to one another in the morphosyntactic alignment of the language. The description of grammatical relations can also reflect transitivity, passivization , and head-dependent-marking or other agreement. Languages have different criteria for grammatical relations. For example, subjecthood criteria may have implications for how
1085-465: The sheer diversity of human language and to question fundamental assumptions about the relationship between language and logic. It became apparent that there was no such thing as the most natural way to express a thought and so logic could no longer be relied upon as a basis for studying the structure of language. The Port-Royal grammar modeled the study of syntax upon that of logic. (Indeed, large parts of Port-Royal Logic were copied or adapted from
Mawmluh Cave - Misplaced Pages Continue
1120-574: The subject is referred to from a relative clause or coreferential with an element in an infinite clause. Constituency is the feature of being a constituent and how words can work together to form a constituent (or phrase ). Constituents are often moved as units, and the constituent can be the domain of agreement. Some languages allow discontinuous phrases in which words belonging to the same constituent are not immediately adjacent but are broken up by other constituents. Constituents may be recursive , as they may consist of other constituents, potentially of
1155-414: The verb). Some prominent dependency-based theories of syntax are the following: Lucien Tesnière (1893–1954) is widely seen as the father of modern dependency-based theories of syntax and grammar. He argued strongly against the binary division of the clause into subject and predicate that is associated with the grammars of his day (S → NP VP) and remains at the core of most phrase structure grammars. In
1190-511: The wider goals of the generative enterprise. Generative syntax is among the approaches that adopt the principle of the autonomy of syntax by assuming that meaning and communicative intent is determined by the syntax, rather than the other way around. Generative syntax was proposed in the late 1950s by Noam Chomsky , building on earlier work by Zellig Harris , Louis Hjelmslev , and others. Since then, numerous theories have been proposed under its umbrella: Other theories that find their origin in
1225-456: Was U Nongkit Khubor (The Messenger) published at Mawphlang in 1889 by William Williams . Khasi in Latin script has a different system, distinct from that of English. Khasi uses a 23-letter alphabet by removing the letters c, f, q, v, x and z from the basic Latin alphabet and adding the diacritic letters ï and ñ, and the digraph ng, which is treated as a letter in its own right. The diagraph ng
#406593