Syntax 1 Bhupendra Nandlal Kesur Department of English M. J. College, Jalgaon Topics to be covered 2  Meaning and Nature of Syntax  Parts of Sentence: Subject and Predicate  Elements of Sentence: Subject, verb, object, complement and adverbial  Sentence Structure: Deep and Surface Structure  Sentence Analysis: Immediate Constituents in Tree Diagram. Definition of Syntax 3 Syntax is the study of the rules governing the way  words are combined to form sentences in a language. *garden the  *Children are  *Work in  This class: what syntactic structure is and what  the rules that determine syntactic structure are like. Syntax 4  Properties of syntactic knowledge: Humans can understand & produce an infinite number of  sentences they never heard before “Some purple gnats are starting to tango on microwave”  Our grammar can understand and produce long  sentences “Bill said that he thought that the esteemed leader of the house had  it in mind to tell the unfortunate vice president that the calls that he made from the office in the White House that he thought was private…..” Determine the grammatical relations in a sentence  Mary hired Bill. Vs. Bill hired Mary  Syntax & meaning 5 Non-sense sentences with clear syntax  Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.  A verb crumpled the milk.  I gave the question a scuba-diving egg.  *Furiously sleep ideas green colorless.  *Milk the crumpled  *the question I an egg scuba-diving gave.   Sentences are composed of discrete units that are combined by rules. These rules explain how speakers can store infinite knowledge in a finite space- brain. Parts of a Sentence A sentence is… A group of words with a subject  and verb that expresses a complete thought. SUBJECT PREDICATE The dog barked at the mailman. Sentence Fragments A sentence fragment is a group of words that  looks like a sentence but…. does not contain both a subject and a verb OR  does not express a complete thought.  F / SWhen I get home F / SRan as fast as humanly possible F / SSeveral decided not to attend F / SStudied every spare moment F / SAs soon as we arrived Write a sentence about this picture. Draw a line between the subject and predicate. SUBJECT The (complete) subject is the part of a  sentence about which something is being said. It tells WHAT or WHOM the sentence is about.  It DOES something or is TALKED ABOUT.  A line of people waited to see the movie. 1. Standing in line were several sailors. 2. The day of the performance arrived. 3. Because he had the hic-ups, he was asked to 4. leave the library.