In linguistics, syntax is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), agreement, the nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning (semantics). There are numerous approaches to syntax that differ in their central assumptions and goals.
An auxiliary verb is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a participle, which respectively provide the main semantic content of the clause. An example is the verb have in the sentence I have finished my lunch. Here, the auxiliary have helps to express the perfect aspect along with the participle, finished. Some sentences contain a chain of two or more auxiliary verbs. Auxiliary verbs are also called helping verbs, helper verbs, or (verbal) auxiliaries. Research has been conducted into split inflection in auxiliary verbs.
In Celtic mythology, Adsullata was a river goddess of the Continental Celts associated with the River Savus (Sava) in Noricum.
Robert D. Van Valin Jr. is an American linguist and the principal researcher behind the development of Role and Reference Grammar, a functional theory of grammar encompassing syntax, semantics, and discourse pragmatics. His 1997 book Syntax: structure, meaning and function is an attempt to provide a model for syntactic analysis which is just as relevant for languages like Dyirbal and Lakhota as it is for more commonly studied Indo-European languages.
Generative grammar is a theoretical approach in linguistics that regards grammar as a domain-specific system of rules that generates all and only the grammatical sentences of a given language. In light of poverty of the stimulus arguments, grammar is regarded as being partly innate, the innate portion of the system being referred to as universal grammar. The generative approach has focused on the study of syntax while addressing other aspects of language including semantics, morphology, phonology, and psycholinguistics.
In linguistic typology, ergative–absolutive alignment is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the single argument ("subject") of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb, and differently from the agent ("subject") of a transitive verb. Examples include Basque, Georgian, Mayan, Tibetan, and certain Indo-European languages. It has also been attributed to the Semitic modern Aramaic languages. Ergative languages are classified into 2 groups: those that are morphologically ergative but syntactically behave as accusative and those that—on top of being ergative morphologically—also show ergativity in syntax. No language has been recorded in which both the morphological and syntactical ergative are present. Languages that belong to the former group are more numerous than those to the latter. Dyirbal is said to be the only representative of syntactic ergativity, yet it displays accusative alignment with certain pronouns.
Insular Celtic languages are the group of Celtic languages spoken in Brittany, Great Britain, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. All surviving Celtic languages are in the Insular group, including Breton, which is spoken on continental Europe in Brittany, France. The Continental Celtic languages, although once widely spoken in mainland Europe and in Anatolia, are extinct.
Bernard Sterling Comrie, is a British-born linguist. Comrie is a specialist in linguistic typology, linguistic universals and on Caucasian languages.
Peter Hugoe Matthews, FBA was a British linguist and historian of linguistics. He was a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and formerly Professor and Head of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Cambridge (1980–2001). He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1985.
Andrew Carnie is a Canadian professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona. He is the author or coauthor of nine books and has papers published on formal syntactic theory and on linguistic aspects of Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic. He was born in Calgary, Alberta. He is also a teacher of Balkan and international folk dance. In 2009, he was named as one of the Linguist List's Linguist of the Day. From 2010-2012, he has worked as the faculty director of the University of Arizona's Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs. In August 2012, he was appointed interim Dean of the graduate college. From 2013-2022, he worked as the Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Dean of the Graduate College. In that role he founded the University's Graduate Center, established the university's Graduate faculty, significantly increased student diversity, and worked to establish better working conditions and wages for students.
Thomas Mowbray Charles-Edwards is an emeritus academic at the University of Oxford. He formerly held the post of Jesus Professor of Celtic and is a Professorial Fellow at Jesus College.
In certain theories of linguistics, thematic relations, also known as semantic roles, are the various roles that a noun phrase may play with respect to the action or state described by a governing verb, commonly the sentence's main verb. For example, in the sentence "Susan ate an apple", Susan is the doer of the eating, so she is an agent; an apple is the item that is eaten, so it is a patient.
Jespersen's Cycle is a series of processes in historical linguistics, which describe the historical development of the expression of negation in a variety of languages, from a simple pre-verbal marker of negation, through a discontinuous marker and in some cases through subsequent loss of the original pre-verbal marker. The pattern was formulated in Otto Jespersen's 1917 book Negation in English and Other Languages, and named after him in Swedish linguist Östen Dahl's 1979 article Typology of Sentence Negation.
David Michael Benjamin Denison is a British linguist whose work focuses on the history of the English language.
Andrew Radford is a British linguist known for his work in syntax and child language acquisition. His first important contribution to the field was a 1977 book on Italian syntax. He achieved international recognition in 1981 for his book Transformational Syntax, which sold over 30,000 copies and was the standard introduction to Chomsky's Government and Binding Theory for many years; and this was followed by an introduction to transformational grammar in 1988, which sold over 70,000. He has since published several books on syntax within the framework of generative grammar and the Minimalist Program of Noam Chomsky, a number of which have appeared in the series Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics.
Maggie Tallerman is a professor of linguistics at Newcastle University. Her research interests include Celtic linguistics, language origins and evolution, language typology, morphology and morphosyntax. She is a leading expert in the fields of language evolution and syntax of the Welsh language.
Liliane Madeleine Victor Haegeman ARB is a Belgian professor of linguistics at Ghent University. She received her PhD in English linguistics in 1981 from Ghent University, and has written numerous books and journal articles thereafter. Haegeman is best known for her contributions to the English generative grammar, with her book Introduction to Government and Binding Theory (1991) well established as the most authoritative introduction on the Principles and Parameters approach of generative linguistics. She is also acknowledged for her contributions to syntactic cartography, including works on the left periphery of Germanic languages, negation and discourse particles, and adverbial clauses. As a native speaker of West Flemish, her research has also touched upon the comparative study of English and West Flemish in terms of the subject position and its relation to the clausal structure.
David Adger is a Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London. Adger is interested in the human capacity for syntax. Adger served as president of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain from 2015 to 2020.
Bettelou Los is a linguist and philologist specializing in the history of the English language. Since 2013 she has held the Forbes Chair of English Language at the University of Edinburgh.
In linguistics, the syntax–semantics interface is the interaction between syntax and semantics. Its study encompasses phenomena that pertain to both syntax and semantics, with the goal of explaining correlations between form and meaning. Specific topics include scope, binding, and lexical semantic properties such as verbal aspect and nominal individuation, semantic macroroles, and unaccusativity.
