Syntactic Properties

Syntax is basically the study how expressions are

combined. Syntactic properties (of expressions)
determine their behaviour of such combinations.

There are 2 kinds of syntactic properties:

1. Word order
2. Co-occurrence

1. Word order
This is the order of wordsthe most obvious
aspect of syntactic well-formedness.
i) The word order in English is SVO. But this differs from
language to language. Only 35% of world
languages have this order.
ii) English is commonly considered as a rigid
language. But still in English the SVO order can also
be altered, especially in topicalized sentences.
Example: Sally: I know you dont like apples. So I
made you strawberry pie.
Bob: Oh, apple, I like. Its guava I dont like.

 iii) In English the word order can go beyond the SVO

structure by the use of demonstrative that
(determiners).
Example: Sally still didnt receive that letter.
* Sally still didnt receive letter that.
Here the determiner must precede the noun.

2. Co-occurrence
Getting expression in the right order does not
guarantee syntactic well-formedness. Cooccurrence is more basic than word order, but
far more obvious.
As soon as one decides to use a particular
expression in a sentence, the choice controls
(structures) the rest of the sentence, which is
called co-occurrence.
This is divided into 3 parts: i) Arguments, ii)
Adjuncts, iii) Agreements

i) Arguments
This is an occurrence of expression that has been
necessitated by some other expressions.

Example: * Sally devoured.

Sally devoured an apple.
Here, devoured requires two arguments: the
object (an apple), and the subject argument
(Sally). Object arguments can also be called as
the complements.

 Arguments do not always need to be noun-phrases.

Different kind of expressions require different
arguments.
Example: * Sally wondered an apple.
Sally wondered about Bob.
Sometimes expressions can require multiple
complements
Example: Sally put the book on the table.

It is not only verbs that require arguments. Other

expressions can also have their own arguments.
Example: Sally came to party with Bob.
For sentences to be well-formed, expressions need
to provide just as much argument they need. Too
much might destroy the expression.
Example: * Sally devoured an apple, guava and a
pear.

ii) Adjuncts
Some expressions in a sentence are purely
optional. They are adjuncts. They can be added
as many as one wants.

Example: Sally likes dogs.

Sally likes small dogs.
Sally likes small fluffy dogs.
Sally likes small fluffy brown dogs.
Here in the above example the attributive
adjectives are optional. But they cannot be used
in every sentence structure.
Example: * Sally likes fluffy Bob.

 Adjuncts can be other than attributive

adjectives.
Example: Sally went to France last year.
Sally went to France last year in July.
Same expressions can be used as arguments and
also as adjuncts according the situation of the
expression.
Example: Sally urged Bob to study French.
Sally went to France to study French.

iii) Agreements
Distinct expressions in a sentence might have
same value for some grammatical features. The
expressions agree upon these features.

Example of a number agreement:

This girl came.
* This girls came.
* These girl came.
These girls came.
Mixing and matching expressions from different
numbers is not allowed.