Syntax is a description of the way words are put together to make sentences. It describes the order of the subject and verb, the position of auxiliary words and objects, and the relation of modifiers to the words they modify. The term also refers to the study of the arrangement of words in sentences. See Sentence .
Word order is not the same in all languages. In English, we say “The boy kicked the ball.” In another language, such as Japanese, the order might be “Boy ball kicked.” When we put words together in the proper order, we are able to express the meaning we intend. The sentence “The waiter wiped the table clean,” for instance, has a different meaning from the sentence “The waiter wiped the clean table.” The meaning is different because the syntax is different.
Sentences that have two different meanings are referred to as syntactically ambiguous. The sentence “I bought red socks and towels” can mean that only the socks are red or that both the socks and the towels are red. Changing the word order can resolve this ambiguity (“I bought towels and red socks”).
Syntax and morphology (the study of word formation and structure) make up grammar. The study of grammar is one of the main divisions of linguistics, the study of language. Other branches are phonology (the study of the system of sounds used by a language), semantics (the study of meaning), psycholinguistics (the study of the acquisition and processing of language), and pragmatics (the study of the use of language).
