Syntax

句法学

A traditional term for the study of the rules governing the way words are combined to form sentences in a language. In this use, syntax is opposed to morphology, the study of word structure. An alternative definition (avoiding the concept of ‘word’) is the study of the interrelationships between elements of sentence structure, and of the rules governing the arrangement of sentences in sequences. In this use, one might then talk of the ‘syntax of the word’. In initial formulations of generative linguistics, the syntactic component is one of three major organizational units within a grammar, containing rules for the generation of syntactic structures (e.g. phrase-structure rules, transformational rules). The exact nature of the syntactic rules within this component varies from one grammatical theory to another. Syntactic structures (patterns, or constructions) are analysable into sequences of syntactic categories or syntactic classes, these being established on the basis of the syntactic relationships linguistics items have with other items in a construction. Some studies propose an analysis whereby categories are analysed as sets of syntactic features, to permit a greater degree of generalization across categories. The study of the field as a whole is known as syntactic theory. Studying the sequential arrangements of syntax is sometimes referred to as syntactics, but there is a possibility of confusion here with the earlier used of this term as one of the three major divisions of semiotics (along with pragmatics and semantics). The adjective form of ‘syntax” in modern linguistics is syntactic.

这个传统术语指研究语言中词组合成句子的规则。这种涵义的句法学与研究词结构的形态学对立。另一种定义（回避“词”的概念）是研究句子结构成分之间的相互关系和组成句子序列的规则。生成语言学中，句法部分是语法的三大组成部分之一，包含生成句法结构的各种规则（例如短语结构规则，转换规则）。这个组成部分内句法规则的确切性质随不同的语法理论而异。句法结构（型式或构式）可分析为句法范畴或句法类的序列，分析的依据是构式内语项与语项的句法关系。最近的研究将范畴分析为一组句法特征，以使各范畴具有更大程度的概括性。整个句法领域的研究称作句法理论。研究句法的序列组配有时称作“句法组配学”，但‘syntactics’一语原先指语形学，是符号学的三大部分之一（与语用学和语义学并列），因此可能引起混淆。现代语言学中‘syntax’一词的形容词是‘syntactic’。