Editing Language (section)

====Syntax====
{{main|Syntax}}
[[File:Constituent structure analysis English sentence.svg|upright=1.5|thumb|In addition to word classes, a sentence can be analyzed in terms of grammatical functions: "The cat" is the [[subject (grammar)|subject]] of the phrase, "on the mat" is a [[locative (case)|locative]] phrase, and "sat" is the core of the [[Predicate (grammar)|predicate]].]]

Another way in which languages convey meaning is through the order of words within a sentence. The grammatical rules for how to produce new sentences from words that are already known is called syntax. The syntactical rules of a language determine why a sentence in English such as "I love you" is meaningful, but "*love you I" is not.{{refn|group=note|The prefixed asterisk * conventionally indicates that the sentence is ungrammatical, i.e. syntactically incorrect.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Denham|first1=Kristin|author1-link=Kristin Denham |last2=Lobeck|first2=Anne|author2-link=Anne Lobeck |title=Linguistics for Everyone: An Introduction|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n0KVSvqvZKYC&pg=PA9|year=2009|publisher=Cengage Learning|isbn=978-1-4130-1589-8|page=9|quote=An ''ungrammatical'' sentence is one that is impossible in a given language, one that a native speaker of that variety would never utter naturally. (Remember that ungrammatical sentences are marked with an asterisk, *.|access-date=16 April 2020|archive-date=22 May 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200522101450/https://books.google.com/books?id=n0KVSvqvZKYC&pg=PA9|url-status=live}}</ref> }} Syntactical rules determine how word order and sentence structure is constrained, and how those constraints contribute to meaning.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Baker|2001|p=265}}</ref> For example, in English, the two sentences "the slaves were cursing the master" and "the master was cursing the slaves" mean different things, because the role of the grammatical subject is encoded by the noun being in front of the verb, and the role of object is encoded by the noun appearing after the verb. Conversely, in [[Latin language|Latin]], both ''Dominus servos vituperabat'' and ''Servos vituperabat dominus'' mean "the master was reprimanding the slaves", because ''servos'', or "slaves", is in the [[accusative case]], showing that they are the [[Object (grammar)|grammatical object]] of the sentence, and ''dominus'', or "master", is in the [[nominative case]], showing that he is the subject.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Trask|2007|p=179}}</ref>

Latin uses morphology to express the distinction between subject and object, whereas English uses word order. Another example of how syntactic rules contribute to meaning is the rule of [[Wh-movement|inverse word order in questions]], which exists in many languages. This rule explains why when in English, the phrase "John is talking to Lucy" is turned into a question, it becomes "Who is John talking to?", and not "John is talking to who?". The latter example may be used as a way of placing [[focus (linguistics)|special emphasis]] on "who", thereby slightly altering the meaning of the question. Syntax also includes the rules for how complex sentences are structured by grouping words together in units, called [[phrase]]s, that can occupy different places in a larger syntactic structure. Sentences can be described as consisting of phrases connected in a tree structure, connecting the phrases to each other at different levels.{{sfn|Baker|2001|pp=269–270}} To the right is a graphic representation of the syntactic analysis of the English sentence "the cat sat on the mat". The sentence is analyzed as being constituted by a noun phrase, a verb, and a prepositional phrase; the prepositional phrase is further divided into a preposition and a noun phrase, and the noun phrases consist of an article and a noun.<ref name="Trask 2007 218–19">{{harvcoltxt|Trask|2007|pp=218–219}}</ref>

The reason sentences can be seen as being composed of phrases is because each phrase would be moved around as a single element if syntactic operations were carried out. For example, "the cat" is one phrase, and "on the mat" is another, because they would be treated as single units if a decision was made to emphasize the location by moving forward the prepositional phrase: "[And] on the mat, the cat sat".<ref name="Trask 2007 218–19"/> There are many different formalist and functionalist frameworks that propose theories for describing syntactic structures, based on different assumptions about what language is and how it should be described. Each of them would analyze a sentence such as this in a different manner.<ref name="NewmeyerForm"/>