A grammar of sentences: syntax

A grammar of sentences: syntax

1. Subjects and predicates

   • Subject
     • Is the person or thing about which something is affirmed.
       • -Simple subject -Composite subject
   • Predicate
     • Is the part of a sentence that says something about the subject.
       • -Simple predicate -Compound predicate

2. Syntax and grammar

   • Syntax
     • Means the study of the whole of rules governing the way morphemes, words, clauses, and phrases.
   • Grammar
     • Refers to knowledge linguistic data stored in an individual's brain, which allows them to produce well-formed sentences.

3. Parts of speech

   • Noun
     • A person, place, thing or idea.
   • Pronoun
     • A word used un place of a noun
   • Conjunction
     • A word used to connect other words, phrases, and clauses
   • Adjective
     • A word used to modify (describe) a noun
   • Preposition
     • A word placed BEFORE a noun or pronoun to show its location or direction
   • Interjection
     • A word that expresses strong or sudden emotion
   • Verb
     • A word that tells what someone or something does.
   • Adverb
     • Can be added to a verb to modify its meaning; can also modify adjectives and other adverbs

4. Composite sentences

   • Are two or more sentences or sentence fragments including a finite verb (i.e. clauses).
   • On the other hand, one of the clauses is independent and would stand alone, while the other, is an a sense secondary or subordinate
   • are of two kinds:
     • Compound sentences conjoin sentences of equal status by means of co-ordinating conjunctions.
     • Complex sentences involve a main and at least one subordinate clause, linked by subordinators.

5. Anatomy of a sentence

   • Noun Phrase
     • Refers to words that work the same way as a noun.
       • A noun phrase features a noun, pronoun, and other modifiers.
   • Verb phrase
     • Are words that are used to describe an action, like swim, drive, teach, and walk.
       • A sentence can only be considered complete it has at least one verb.

6. Government and agreement

   • Agreement (or concord)
     • Marks related items in a sentence for one or more grammatical categories.
   • Government (or rection)
     • Is a particular type of agreement, which marks the dependency of one item on another.
   • Government or rection refers to the relationship between a word and its dependents.
   • Government occurs between any two words connected by a dependency, the dominant word opening slots for subordinate words