Linguistics

General Linguistics

Syntax

The study of how words (the smallest unit of grammar that has meaning and can stand alone; the word 'car') and morphemes (smaller units than words that carry meaning but cannot stand alone; the prefix 'un-') combine to form larger units of grammar, such as phrases and sentences. Syntax confirms itself with word order, grammatical relationships between words and morphemes, constituency (hierarchical structure for sentences), agreement (when words change to adapt to their neighbors in a larger combined unit of grammar), crosslinguistic variation, and the semantics (the relationship between the form of a word and its meaning).

The word syntax comes from Ancient Greek: σύνταξις 'coordination,' which consists of σύν (syn), 'together,' and τάξις (táxis), 'ordering.' Language played a crucial role in Greek philosophy, with figures like Plato and Aristotle exploring the relationship between words, meaning, and reality. Aristotle's work on logic delved into the principles of constructing valid arguments, indirectly touching upon aspects of syntax. Classical Greek and Hellenic thinkers made substantial contributions to the study of grammar; Dionysius Thrax (100s BCE), composed the Tékhnē Grammatikḗ (Art of Grammar), the first work of analytical linguistics focusing on Ancient Greek, which included discussions on parts of speech, morphology, and syntax.

In English, syntax is largely controlled by word order ('the girl loves the boy' versus 'the boy loves the girl') whereas in many other languages, case markers indicate these grammatical relationships; we see this trait in Latin where word order is far less important - 'the girl loves the boy' can be written in a variety of correct orders because the -um ending on the object (boy) stays constant (puerum puella amat, amat puella puerum, amat puerum puella, or puella amat puerum are all correct. Editor's note: puella is girl, puer(-um) is boy, and amat is love).

Word Order

The sequence in which the subject (S), verb (V), and object (O) typically appear in sentences. Typically is an important qualifier; while the dominant word order offers a foundational understanding, many languages exhibit flexibility in their word order, especially for emphasis, thematic structure, or in questions versus statements.

• Subject-Object-Verb (SOV): Languages that typically use SOV order include Japanese, Korean, Turkish, and Latin. Around 40-45% of the world's languages are believed to use SOV as their default word order.
• Subject-Verb-Object (SVO): Languages that typically use SVO order include English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and Russian. Approximately 35-40% of languages are thought to use SVO as their primary order.
• Verb-Subject-Object (VSO) and Verb-Object-Subject (VOS): These orders are less common. VSO is seen in Classical Arabic and Welsh, while VOS appears in languages like Malagasy and Fijian. Combined, VSO and VOS might account for around 10-15% of languages.
• Object-Verb-Subject (OVS) and Object-Subject-Verb (OSV): These are the rarest word orders among languages. Examples include Hixkaryana for OVS and Xavante for OSV. Together, they constitute less than 1% of all languages.

The separation by language family is as follows:

• Indo-European predominantly features SVO (English, Spanish) and SOV (Hindi, Persian) orders.
• Sino-Tibetan languages can show diversity in structure; Mandarin Chinese is notably SVO.
• Turkic generally features SOV order, as seen in Turkish and Uzbek.
• Uralic features a mix, but Finnish and Hungarian, for example, tend to favor SVO.
• Afro-Asiatic languages like Arabic (VSO), Hebrew (SVO), and Amharic (SOV) show diversity.
• Austronesian also has this variability; Indonesian (SVO) and Malagasy (VOS).
• Dravidian primarily features SOV order, as in Tamil and Telugu.

Grammatical Relationships

The standard examples of grammatical functions from traditional grammar are subject, direct object, and indirect object. Many modern theories of grammar acknowledge numerous additional types of relations (e.g. complement, specifier, predicative, et cetera). The role of grammatical relations in theories of grammar is greatest in dependency grammars, which propose dozens of distinct grammatical relations. Critics argue that overemphasis on certain grammatical models, such as word order (particularly from an Indo-European focus), may overlook the diversity and complexity of language structures worldwide.

Some languages, often referred to as non-configurational, exhibit a high degree of flexibility in word order. Grammatical relationships are often indicated through inflectional morphology. In Australian Aboriginal languages, Latin, and Classical Greek, the subject, object, and verb can appear in various orders without changing the fundamental meaning of the sentence.

In topic-prominent languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, the topic of the sentence (what the sentence is about, which can be the subject, object, or another element) comes first, and what is said about the topic follows. This structure emphasizes the topic-comment construction over the subject-predicate construction typical of subject-prominent languages like English.

In languages with rich morphological systems, such as agglutinative and fusional languages, grammatical roles are often marked by case endings or through agreement rather than strictly by word order. This allows for greater flexibility in sentence structure and can convey additional nuances.

Polysynthetic Languages: Polysynthetic languages, which include many indigenous languages of the Americas, incorporate a high degree of information within single words through complex inflection. This can include the subject, object, verb, and additional modifiers and relational elements, making the concept of word order as applied in more analytic languages (like English) less directly relevant.

Morphology: The Study of Word Structure

• Morphological Typology
  • Inflectional vs. Derivational Morphology
  • Synthetic vs. Analytic Languages
• Morphological Processes
  • Affixation, Reduplication, Compounding
  • Suppletion, Conversion, Cliticization

Syntax: The Study of Sentence Structure

• Syntactic Theories and Models
  • Generative Grammar
  • Dependency Grammar
• Sentence Types and Clause Structures
  • Simple, Compound, Complex, and Compound-Complex Sentences
  • Subordination and Coordination

Grammatical Categories and Concepts

• Cases in Languages
  • Nominative, Accusative, Ergative, and Others
  • Case Systems: Tripartite, Split Ergativity
• Tense, Aspect, and Mood (TAM)
  • Tense: Past, Present, Future
  • Aspect: Imperfective, Perfective, Progressive
  • Mood: Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative, Conditional
• Voice and Valency
  • Active, Passive, Middle Voices
  • Valency Changing Operations: Causatives, Applicatives

Advanced Topics in Morphosyntax

• Agreement and Concord
  • Subject-Verb Agreement
  • Noun-Adjective Agreement
• Word Order Typology
  • SOV, SVO, VSO, and Free Word Order
  • Word Order and Information Structure

Semantic Roles and Relations

• Thematic Roles: Agent, Patient, Theme, Experiencer
• Semantic Fields and Lexical Sets
• Polysemy, Homophony, and Synonymy

Language Change and Evolution

• Historical Linguistics and Language Change
  • Sound Changes, Analogical Changes
  • Grammaticalization and Language Contact
• Dialectology and Sociolinguistics
  • Language Variation and Change
  • Social Factors in Language Change

Comparative Studies Across Language Families

• Indo-European Languages
• Afro-Asiatic Languages
• Sino-Tibetan Languages
• Language Isolates and Constructed Languages

Research Methods in Comparative Linguistics

• Comparative Method and Reconstruction
• Typological and Areal Linguistics
• Corpus Linguistics and Computational Approaches

Current Trends and Future Directions

• Interdisciplinary Approaches: Cognitive Linguistics
• Endangered Languages and Language Revival
• Universal Grammar and Language Acquisition