{"id":766,"date":"2018-09-25T10:21:53","date_gmt":"2018-09-25T14:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/?p=766"},"modified":"2021-04-02T12:40:11","modified_gmt":"2021-04-02T16:40:11","slug":"syntax-semantics-and-grammar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/2018\/09\/25\/syntax-semantics-and-grammar\/","title":{"rendered":"Syntax, semantics, and grammar."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Language has two important aspects that work together in order to convey comprehension.<\/p>\n<p>Syntax deals with sentence construction and semantics involves meaning. Each informs the other to some degree, but they can also stand apart.<\/p>\n<p>Because of this distinction, I can say that something is syntactic but ambiguous:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>They are cooking apples.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Is it a group of people preparing apples to eat or is it a description of apples meant for cooking?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I can say that something is syntactic but nonsensical:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>From the linguist <a href=\"https:\/\/chomsky.info\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Noam Chomsky<\/a>. Further information about this can be found at the Futurity website in the article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/chomsky-internal-grammar-1064852-2\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">&#8220;Chomsky Told Us: We Have Grammar In Our Heads&#8221;<\/a> by James Devitt-Nyu.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And I can say that something is asyntactic but comprehensible:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>All your base are belong to us.<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>I can haz cheezburger?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>When people use the word <em>grammatical<\/em>, I&#8217;ve found that what they often mean is <em>syntactic<\/em>. However, I&#8217;ve also encountered situations where people will mean <em>semantic<\/em>, arguing that something is grammatical because it&#8217;s used and understood\u2014even if it goes against common so-called rules of grammar and lexicography.<\/p>\n<p>This distinction can also shift from one discussion to the next, where somebody will change their usage of the word depending on their agreement or disagreement with something that they&#8217;ve heard.<\/p>\n<p>As such, if you&#8217;re going to be precise, it&#8217;s sometimes best to not say <em>grammatical<\/em> at all but use the specific language words for what you&#8217;re trying to convey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Language has two important aspects that work together in order to convey comprehension. Syntax deals with sentence construction and semantics involves meaning. Each informs the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","archive-loop-container"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}