Semantics and Syntax
Semantics and Syntax
A. Definition of Semantics
Semantics is one part of grammar; phonology, syntax and morphology are other parts." The field of linguistics concerned with the study of meaning in language. Linguistic semantics has been defined as the study of how languages organize and express meanings.
B. Definition of Syntax
In linguistics, syntax refers to the rules about the ways in which words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. More simply, syntax can be defined as the arrangement of words in a sentence. Syntax is one of the major components of grammar. There are two levels of syntactic structure. They are :
Ø The surface structure of a sentence is the final stage in the syntactic representation of a sentence, which provides the input to the phonological component of the grammar, and which thus most closely corresponds to the structure of the sentence we articulate and hear. . .
Ø There is another level of syntactic structure, called deep structure, which expresses underlying syntactic structure of sentences.
D. PHRASE STRUCTURE RULES, TRANSFORMATION AND SEMANTIC
REPRESENTATION
Phrase structure rules are a type of rewrite rule used to describe a given language's syntax, and are closely associated with the early stages of transformational grammar, being first proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1957. They are used to break down a natural language sentence into its constituent parts, also known as syntactic categories, including both lexical categories (parts of speech) and phrasal categories. A grammar that uses phrase structure rules is a type of phrase structure grammar. Phrase structure rules as they are commonly employed operate according to the constituency relation, and a grammar that employs phrase structure rules is therefore a constituency grammar; as such, it stands in contrast to dependency grammars, which are based on the dependency relation. Phrase structure rules are usually of the following form:
A à B C
meaning that the constituent A is separated into the two subconstituents B and C. Some examples for English are as follows:
S à NP VP
NP à Det. N
N à (AP) N (PP)
The first rule reads: An S (sentence) consists of an NP (noun phrase) followed by a VP (verb phrase). The second rule reads: A noun phrase consists of an optional Det (determiner) followed by an N (noun). The third rule means that an N (noun) can be preceded by an optional AP (adjective phrase) and followed by an optional PP (prepositional phrase). The round brackets indicate optional constituents.
Beginning with the sentence symbol S, and applying the phrase structure rules successively, finally applying replacement rules to substitute actual words for the abstract symbols, it is possible to generate many proper sentences of English (or whichever language the rules are specified for). If the rules are correct, then any sentence produced in this way ought to be grammatically (syntactically) correct. It is also to be expected that the rules will generate syntactically correct but semantically nonsensical sentences, such as the following well-known example:
This sentence was constructed by Noam Chomsky as an illustration that phrase structure rules are capable of generating syntactically correct but semantically incorrect sentences. Phrase structure rules break sentences down into their constituent parts. These constituents are often represented as tree structures (dendrograms). The tree for Chomsky's sentence can be rendered as follows:
A constituent is any word or combination of words that is dominated by a single node. Thus each individual word is a constituent. Further, the subject NP Colorless green ideas, the minor NP green ideas, and the VP sleep furiously are constituents. Phrase structure rules and the tree structures that are associated with them are a form of immediate constituent analysis.
In transformational grammar, systems of phrase structure rules are supplemented by transformation rules, which act on an existing syntactic structure to produce a new one (performing such operations as negation, passivization, etc.). These transformations are not strictly required for generation, as the sentences they produce could be generated by a suitably expanded system of phrase structure rules alone, but transformations provide greater economy and enable significant relations between sentences to be reflected in the grammar.
An important aspect of phrase structure rules is that they view sentence structure from the top down. The category on the left of the arrow is a greater constituent and the immediate constituents to the right of the arrow are lesser constituents. Constituents are successively broken down into their parts as one moves down a list of phrase structure rules for a given sentence. This top-down view of sentence structure stands in contrast to much work done in modern theoretical syntax. In Minimalism[3] for instance, sentence structure is generated from the bottom up. The operation Merge merges smaller constituents to create greater constituents until the greatest constituent (i.e. the sentence) is reached. In this regard, theoretical syntax abandoned phrase structure rules long ago, although their importance for computational linguistics seems to remain intact.
Semantic representation is an abstract (formal) language in which meanings can be represented. Opinions differ about whether semantic representation is sufficient or necessary, about its form and about how it relates to syntactic representations. Mentalistic, representational theories of meaning claim that a mental semantic representation is necessary to account for the fact that language users grasp meanings. Denotational theories of meaning, on the other hand, claim that meaning can only be explicated in terms of denotations in the world. Semantic representation can take the form of a structure of semantic features (in the Katz-Fodor-semantics and in Jackendoff's conceptual structure) or formulas of a logical system. In the theory of Generative semantics, semantic representations were identified with syntactic deep structures. In almost all other theories, semantic representations are an autonomous level of representation related to deep structure, surface structure and/or LF. See meaning theories.
E. The Relation Between Syntax and Semantics
It is not easy to describe the relation between syntax and semantics, but it is probably easy to say why that is not easy: there are different perspectives about syntax and semantics, so the relation depends on what you understand by form and meaning, structure and content. If you look at the history of Chomskyan linguistics, you will find the chapter in which a group of people were working on deep structures so much that they actually were doing semantics and not syntax.
Syntax and semantics both work at sentence level. Syntax has to do with the form and order of words within the sentence. Semantics has to do with the meaning. Syntax is language dependent, whereas the semantics remains the same if the same sentence were expressed in another language. The distinction between syntax (sentence form) and semantics (word and sentence meaning) is fundamental to the study of language. Syntax is the collection of rules that govern how words are assembled into meaningful sentences. Syntax and semantics both work at sentence level. Syntax has to do with the form and order of words within the sentence. The relation between syntax and semantics can clearly explain by using ambiguity in syntax meaning (syntactic ambiguity). In English grammar, syntactic ambiguity is the sentence that have two or more meanings. Also called structural ambiguity or grammatical ambiguity. Compare with lexical ambiguity (the presence of two or more possible meanings within a single word). The intended meaning of a syntactically ambiguous sentence can often (but not always) be determined by context.
Posted by. Nurhikmawati Mus
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