SYNTAX

What is syntax?

The part of the grammar that represents a speaker’s knowledge of these structures and their formation is called “syntax”.

In other words,syntax is the study of sentence patterns of language.

Syntactic category

Syntactic category is a set of words and phrases in a language which share a significant number of common characteristics.

Syntactic categories commonly include:

1.Part of Speech

(Determiner,Adjective,Noun,Pronoun,Preposition,Adverb,Auxiliary,Verb,etc)

2.Phrase Structure Grammars

(Noun Phrase,Adjective Phrase,Verb Phrase,Adverb Phrase,Preposition Phrase)

3.Sentence,as the core of the structure

PHRASE

A Phrase is a sequence of words or a group of words arranged in a grammatical construction,and functions as a unit in a sentence.

A.Noun Phrase

A noun phrase refers to a phrase that built upon a noun which function as the headword of the phrase.

Example:

1.The young man threw the old dog a bone

            (NP)                               (NP)         (NP)

2.Pretty girls whispered softly

            (NP)

B.Adjective Phrase

An adjective phrase refers to a phrase that modifies a noun.It built upon an adjective which functions as the headword of the phrase.

Example:

1.She seemed extremely pleasant.

                              (AdjP)

2.You are much quicker than l.

                          (AdjP)

C.Verb Phrase

A verb phrase refers to a phrase that composed of at least one verb and the dependents of the verb,in which the verb functions as the headword of the phrase.

Example:

1.He has been singing

                 (VP)

2.The child found the puppy.

                              (VP)

D.Adverb Phrase

An adverb phrase refers to a phrase that often plays the role of telling us when,where,why,or how an event occurred,in which the adverb functions as the headword of the phrase.

Example:

1.We are expecting him to come next year

                                                   (AdvP)

2.He ran very quickly.

                 (AdvP)

E.Proposition Phrase

A proposition phrase refers to a phrase that begins with a preposition,in which the preposition functions as the headword of the phrase.

Example:

1.He arrived by plane

                         (PP)

2.Do you know that man with the scar?

                                              (PP)

sumber:
 

http://www.slideshare.net/Andriyanieka12/10-syntax-syntax-phrases-18509446