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This post answers of the question ‘How to read Examples of Syntax?’ along with syntax examples.
Let’s have a look at the answer to ‘How to read Examples of Syntax?’:
The Layout/Structure of Examples:
In this blog post, you will learn about the layout or structure of examples used in syntax to understand any concept in different languages.
Sensei-ga  gakusei    ni      tegami-o     kaita. (Japanese) (Source language)
teacher      student     to      letter           wrote (Gloss)
‘The teacher wrote a letter to the student.’ (English Translation)
Source Language:
It is the original language whose example has been given.
Gloss:
Gloss is the literal and word-to-word translation of the original language.
English Translation
It is the translation of the source language into the English language.
Why is Gloss Important?
Using the glosses we can work out quite a lot about the word order differences –
and similarities – between the three languages.
Lexical and Grammatical Information
Glosses contain both lexical and grammatical information. Lexical means related to words while grammatical means related to the grammatical categories like tense and aspect.
(31) The student-s ask-ed for these book-s.
DEF.ART student-PL ask-PAST for DEM.PL book-PL
‘The students asked for these books.’
In (31) it has been shown by suggesting a precise gloss of an example from English, treating it as if it were a foreign language, and representing the grammatical information, as usual, in small
capitals.
The Categories of Person and Number
Person
A person refers to the one who is speaking or hearing or the one/ones about whom speaker or hearer is talking.
The first person indicates the speaker, or a group of people that includes the speaker: so both the ‘I’ and ‘we’ forms are first person. The second person indicates the addressee(s): the ‘you’ forms. The third person indicates some third party, an individual or group other than the speaker and addressee: the ‘he/she/it’ and ‘they’ forms.
Number
The category of NUMBER refers to the distinction between SINGULAR (one person) and NON-SINGULAR (more than one person).
Example of French Language:
In French, as in most European languages, the number is either ‘singular’ or ‘plural’. Note, though, that French distinguishes between tu parles ‘you (singular) speak’ and vous parlez ‘you (plural)
speak’.
Example of Classical English:
English once had this distinction too:
thou meant ‘you (singular)’, equivalent to tu, and some varieties of modern English also have second-person plural forms such as you all or yous (for instance, yous occurs in parts of both northeast and
northwest England).
Some languages divide non-singular into several categories:
Dual
A category referring to two people is called a DUAL)
Trial
A category for three people is called a TRIAL, and additionally a plural, used for referring to more than three people. For example, the Polynesian language Kwamera has just such a system.
Writing Systems and Glosses
Not all languages use the Roman alphabet (the one you’re reading now). For example, Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, and Chinese and Japanese both use writing systems based on characters rather than an alphabet. But there usually exist conventions for writing such languages in the Roman alphabet, and this enables linguists to make use of the examples.
Why do Languages have Syntax?
The syntax allows speakers to express all the meanings that they need to convey. This might mean altering the basic word order of a sentence,
- to emphasize or downplay a particular phrase,
- to ask a question,
- or grouping words together in different ways to modify the meaning.
Concluding Remarks
This blog post has discussed different concepts in syntax including the layout of examples in different languages to understand the syntax of that language, the importance of Gloss, the lexical and Grammatical information, the categories of Person and Number and finally why is there need to have syntax.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: What is the syntax?
Ans: Syntax is the study of sentence structure. It is a branch of linguistics that deals with the analysis of the structure of sentences.
Q2: What is a person?
Ans: A person refers to the one who is speaking or hearing or the one/ones about whom the speaker or hearer is talking.
Q3: What is a Number?
Ans: Number refers to the categories of singular and plural.
