BAB II

BAB II

THEORETICAL DESCRIPTION

A.   Syntax

1.      The definition of syntax

According to Matthews (1981:1), the term syntax is derived from the ancient Greek word syntaxis , a noun which literally means arrangement or setting out together words into phrases, or clauses and phrases or clauses into sentences.

Moreover, Onion (1971:23) said that the term syntax means arranging together (from the word: syn together and taxis an arrangement ) and the name is given to the part of grammar which treats the ways in which words are arranged together in sentences and of the function they perform. In Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (1995:1212) syntax is defined as the rule of grammar for the arrangement of words into phrases and of phrases into sentences . While in Webster (1988:1359), syntax is defined as a branch of linguistics which studies the arrangement of and relationship among words, phrases and clauses forming sentences.

Bornstein (1977:246) explained that syntax is the processes by which wordsand grammatical categories are combined to form phrase, clause and sentences in language. Then, Chomsky (1966:1) said that syntax is the study of the principles and process by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. A linguistics level such as phonemics, morphology, phrase structure is essentially a set of descriptive devices which are made available for the constructions ofgrammars, it constitute a certain method for representing utterances.

Curme (1931:1) said that syntax treats of the relations of words or groups of words to one another in sentences. It is the set of principles, or constructive ruler, according to which words are combined into sentences in language. Meanwhile, Crystal (1987:94) defined that syntax is the way in which words are arranged to show relationship of meaning within (and sometimes between) sentences. The term comes from syntactic studies have focused on sentence structure where the most important grammatical relationship are expressed.

Yule (1985:80) stated that if concentrating on the structure and ordering of

components within a sentence, we are studying what is technically known as

syntax of language. The word syntax came originally from Greek and literally

meant a setting and together or arrangement .

Moreover, Frederick (1997:70) explained that the discursion of syntax like

the much longer and controversial discursion of phonology is grounded in an essentially polemical stance: the insistence that a simple parse of the surface string and the organization of its elements into steadily more inclusive hierarchical grouping, will never suffice to achieve insightful analysis.

Later Latif (1995:23) defined, A phrase or a sentence is always made from

the words arranged by a particular rule . That is why we must know exactly the classification of words being used the connections of meaning within sentence are showed by the order of words . By knowing the classification of words, we can properly arrange sentence that can show us the meaning of the arrangement. Herman and Haegeman (1989:3) said that syntax or syntactic analysis maybe   defined as: (a) determining the relevant component parts of the sentence, (b) describing these parts grammatically. The component parts of a sentence are called constituent. In other words, Matthews (1974:154) explained that syntax is

concerned with their external functions and their relationship to other word within the sentence. Also, Laurel (2000:167) stated that the study of syntax is the analysis of the constituent parts of a sentence: their form, positioning, and function. Constituents are the proper subparts of sentence. From the definitions above, the researcher concludes that syntax is a branch of linguistics which is very important to be used in analyzing a sentence. By using syntactic analysis, we can know the sentence patterns of the sentence such as N, VP, V, DET, and AUX. Therefore, it can be concluded that syntax is the science which studies about the arrangement and relationship among words, phrases, and clauses forming sentences or larger constructions based on grammatical rules.

B.Constituent Structure

R.L. trask stated (2007: 52)  a type of hierarchical grammatical structure in a sentence. Consider the sentence: The little girl washed her doll. In the view of most linguists, this consists of two pieces, or grammatical units: the little girl and washed her doll. The first of these in turn consists of the plus little girl, and this last consists of little plus girl. The second likewise consists of washed plus her doll; of these, the first consists of wash plus -ed and the second of her plus doll. This is the sort of grammatical (syntactic) structure exhibited by all sentences in English and in most other languages, and we call it constituent structure. Constituent structure is hierarchical: a sentence consists of a couple of large pieces, each of which consists of some smaller pieces, each of which in turn consists of some still smaller pieces, and so on, until we reach the smallest pieces of all, the words or morphemes. And every one of these pieces is a constituent of the sentence. Moreover, every constituent must belong to some particular syntactic category: that is, the grammar of English (or of any language) allows only constituents belonging to certain categories to be combined into certain larger categories. An attempt at using a constituent of the wrong category produces an ungrammatical

result, as in *The under the bed washed her doll (the asterisk marks ungrammaticality).

2. A tree diagram

According to David Crystal (1997 : 397) defines A two demensional diagram used in generative grammar as a convenient means of displaying the internal hierarchical structure of sentences as generated by a set of rules. the root of tree diagram is at the top of diagram, concisting of the initial symbol “S”. From this top most point, or node, branches descend corresponding to the categories specified by the rules( e.g. NP,VP).

On the other hand ,George Yule (2010 : 99) stated tree diagram is one of the most common ways to create a visual representation of syntactic structure is through.We can use the symbols  (Art=article,N = noun, NP = noun phrase) to label parts of the tree as we try to capture the hierarchical organization of those parts in the underlying structure of phrases and sentences. So, we can take the information in a labeled and bracketed format, shown on the left, and present it in a tree diagram, shown on the right.                 

D. Hierarchical structure

According to  Fromklin (2007:94) Hierarchical structure is an essential property of human language. Words (and sentences) have component parts, which relate to each other in specific,rule-governed ways. Although at first glance it may seem that, aside from order,the morphemes un- and -atic each relate to the root system in the same way,this is not the case. The root system is “closer” to -atic than it is to un-, and un- is actually connected to the adjective systematic, and not directly to  system.Indeed, *unsystem is not a word.

E.Constituent structure tree.

Fromklin and Rodman (2007:130) stated that tree diagram with syntactic category information is called a phrase structure tree or a constituent structure tree. This tree shows that a sentence is both a linear string of words and a hierarchical structure with phrases nested in phrases.Phrase structure trees (PS trees, for short) are explicit graphic representations of a speaker’s knowledge of the structure of the sentences of his language. PS trees represent three aspects of a speaker’s syntactic knowledge:

1. The linear order of the words in the sentence

2. The identification of the syntactic categories of words and groups of words

3. The hierarchical structure of the syntactic categories (e.g., an S is composed

of an NP followed by a VP.

F. Labeled and bracketed

George Yule (2010: 244) defined labeled and bracketed sentences is a type of analysis in which constituents in a sentence are marked off by brackets with labels describing each type of constituent.