Syntactic Hierarchy
Syntactics, or syntax, is concerned with the way sentences are constructed from smaller parts, such as words and phrases. Two steps can be distinguished in the study of syntactics. The first step is to identify different types of units in the stream of speech and writing. In natural languages, such units include sentences, phrases, and words. In artificial languages, lexemes, tokens, and formulas are usually found among the basic units. The second step is to analyse how these units build up larger patterns, and in particular to find general rules that govern the construction of sentences.
The syntactic hierarchy (from smaller to larger units) is as follows:
- Morpheme
- Word
- Phrase
- Phase
- Sentence (clause)
- Text
The term morpho-syntactic hierarchy is a synonym. The domain of a phase is not universally recognized, and only appears in generative works from the '90.
Read more about Syntactic Hierarchy: See Also, Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the words syntactic and/or hierarchy:
“The syntactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretation and a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“In the world of the celebrity, the hierarchy of publicity has replaced the hierarchy of descent and even of great wealth.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)