What is Syntax?

 The word ‘syntax’ comes originally from Greek and means putting together or arranging. in earlier approaches, there was an attempt to produce an accurate description of the sequence or ordering arrangement of elements in the linear structure of the sentence. In more recent attempts to analyze structure, there has been a greater focus on the underlying rule system that we use to produce or generate sentences. Syntax is concerned with the structure of sentences, and determines which words go where, which words combine with which, and which words have which forms. For example, in English, 

''Rahman goes to school every day.'' is a correct sentence  whereas ''goes to school Rahaman everyday'' is an incorrect sentence.

That is, studying syntax allows us to define descriptive rules about how language works. The aim of syntacticians, experts in syntax, is to identify the factors involved in grammar, particularly in relation to specific languages. Eventually, it is assumed that there exist rules that apply to all languages, which is why it is important to study as many different languages as possible.

Definition:

To understand the nature of language, linguists analyze linguistic

elements as well as the principles controlling their behavior and relations in forming sentences, and this analysis is performed at a basic level of linguistics called syntax.

According to Richards et al. (1985), syntax is the study of how words combine to form sentences and the rules that govern the formation of sentences. That is, sentences are constituted of clauses, clauses of phrases, and phrases of words, arranged according to some rules and norms.

 According to Herman (2005), syntax is a study of the relationship between the parts of sentence structure and a study of rules that role the sentence arrangement in words.

Gleason (1955) states that syntax is constituted of a principle of construction and arrangement made of the derivation process and inflection of words into a variation of a bigger construction.

Kridalaksana (1982) mentions that syntax is a set and relation of words, or with some bigger units, or between the bigger units in the language; a subsystem of language which includes those units assumed as parts of grammatical units; and the branch of linguistics studying those units.

Thus, we can say that syntax is considered an area that studies the formation of phrases, clauses, and sentences. It is taken for granted that studying syntax is pertinent to a lot of subject areas in linguistics. We have to study syntax to understand how children acquire their language, how they start constructing sentences, and at what stage they learn the tacit syntactic rules of the language. Further, it is also good to study syntax so we can understand how bilingual and multilingual speakers are able to construct their sentences despite having different structures for different languages. The sentence structure is not the same in English as it is in Bengali!

Studying syntax gives us many answers that are necessary for understanding how languages work, as well as being the doorway to future research and theories on all aspects of linguistics. We also study syntax to develop set rules and constraints on the language. We call them parameters, which limit what we can and cannot do in a language, helping us establish an effective and working communicative system. Some linguists

believe that all languages have the same parameters. This idea is called universal grammar, and was a theory developed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s. From these ideas of linguistic parameters, we can learn, use, and teach the correct way to make sentences.

In fine, syntax is defined as a fundamental level of linguistics that studies sentence construction and helps us to understand and apply the rules for framing correct sentences in particular languages.