Syntax as linguistic discipline

The syntax of a language is a way in which linguistic elements (such as words) are put together to form constituents (such as phrases or clauses) (Webster, 2019). Syntax therefore is the structure of ordering components within sentences - a process of connecting words to construct sentences (Chomsky, 1957). Thus, studying syntax means looking at “… the patterns and relationships of words, phrases, and clauses” [within a sentence] (Chomsky, 1965: 102).

The pattern in which words combine to form phrases, clauses and sentences is governed by grammatical rules of language. People can construct large numbers of sentences using language grammar rules. Syntax therefore governs the structure of a sentence. Yule (1996: 100) explains that, “If we concentrate on the structure and ordering of components within a sentence, we are studying what is technically known as the syntax”.

The above therefore suggests that sentences are not just unstructured sequences of sounds, rather they are a hierarchical constituent structure, in which sounds are grouped together into words, words into phrases, and phrases into sentences. Each constituent in a sentence belongs to a specific syntactic category (Radford, 1988: 109; Nordquist, 2019: 1; Chomsky, 1957: 102).

In the foregoing discussion we referred to words that combine to form groups and groups into sentences. The groups that are formed in the process are meaningful groups. A meaningful word-group can only be formed when there is a semantic relationship between the words (Van Rooyen et al., 1982: 2).

During the process of word-regrouping external factors like tone can never be ruled out, considering that, in Bantu languages tone plays an important role in individual words (Van Rooyen, 1982: 2).

What we gather from the above discussion is that isiXhosa syntax is a study that is concerned with the relationship of words in a sentence. That relationship is determined by the meaning, order of words (structure/form) and other variables in a sentence.

As words in linguistics are classified as parts of speech, it is clear that an isiXhosa sentence is made up of one or several parts of speech. Any part of speech in isiXhosa may form a sentence. A sentence may consist of one word due to the implementation of a conjunctive orthography. isiXhosa is an agglutinative language in nature, meaning that, it has a linear arrangement of formatives in a word. This means that a verb does not only comprise of a stem, but also formatives with reference to the subject and/or object in the subject and/or object concords.

• A sentence may consist of one word:

  Predicative clause

  • Uhambile ‘He/she is gone’
  • Ndivile ‘I have heard’
  • Yiza ‘Come’

  Copulatives

  • Yinja ‘It is a dog.’
  • Kubuhlungu ‘It is painful.’
  • Mhle ‘He/she is beautiful.’
  • Unesisa ‘He/she is kind hearted.’
• A sentence may neither have a predicate nor copulative:
  • Hayi bo! ‘Never!’
  • Ngoba? ‘Why?’
  • Nezi? ‘Even these?’
  • Mfazi! ‘Woman!’
• In isiXhosa, a sentence may be extended in various ways. The subject may be added to the predicate as a substantive:
  • Umntwana uyadlala. The child is playing.
  • Ithole liyatya. The calf is eating.
• The object may be added to the predicate as a substantive:
  • Umntwana uyayidlala ibhola. ‘The child is playing the ball.’
  • Ithole liyayitya ingca. ‘The calf is eating the grass.’
• The subject and the object may appear as substantives, without a reference to the object within the predicate:
  • Umntwana udlala ibhola. ‘The child is playing a ball.’
  • Ithole litya ingca. ‘The calf is eating the grass.’
• The predicate may take an adverbial adjunct:
  • Umntwana ubhala ngosiba. ‘The child is writing with a pen.’
  • Umfazi uhleli esitulweni. ‘The woman is sitting on a chair.’
• The predicate may take: a subject; an object; a descriptive:
  • Intombi ipheka ukutya okuninzi. ‘The girl is cooking too much food.’
  • Izinja zileqa iibhokhwe ezinkulu. ‘The dogs are chasing big goats.’
• A sentence may be extended by adding one or more qualificatives to both the subject and the object:
  • Indoda etyebileyo ibetha inja enomgada. ‘A fat man is beating a sick dog.’
  • Umfazi omdala unxibe ilokhwe ebomvu. ‘An old woman has a red dress on.’
• The predicate may be a compound one. In such cases an auxiliary verb is followed by the main verb:
  • Baza kufika. ‘They are coming.’
  • Gcwizi abethwe. ‘He/she was nearly punished.’
  • Ndide ndambona. ‘At last I have set my eye on him/her.’
• As a unit these can only take adjuncts associated with a predicate:
  • Baza kufika ekhaya. ‘They are coming home.’
  • Gcwizi awe ngobuso. ‘He/she nearly fell on his/her face.’
  • Sikhe satyelela eMonti. ‘We have once visited East London.’

Chomsky, in Yule (1996: 102) produced a grammar with very specific rules, which he called Transformational Generative Grammar TGG. Basically, this grammar was to capture the fact that a sentence can have another sentence inside it, or a phrase can have another phrase of the same type inside it. This grammar would also be in a position of revealing the basis of these phenomena - how some superficially distinct sentences are closely related, and how some superficially similar sentences are in fact distinct.

The Transformational-generative linguists took it upon themselves to determine what the rules are, that underlie a language and how they work together to create the sentences of a language. This model of competence has three major components: syntax, phonology and semantics. In Chomsky’s view, syntax is “central” which is to say, that sentences are principally formed within the syntactic component. The syntactic component has two sub-components: the base component and the transformational component.

The base component contains a set of rules called phrase-structure rules, which provide the constituent structure for sentences. The constituent structure is simply the way various syntactic units are combined. It also contains a lexicon. The output of the base component is a string of terms called a deep structure, which represents the basis for the meaning of the sentence. The deep structure feeds into the transformational component, which is a set of rules that turns the deep structure into a surface structure. Adverbs will always come at the end of the deep structure sentences.

In the second example ‘yesterday’ moved to the beginning of the sentence. To do this, we need a set of rules that will change or move constituents in the structures derived from the phrase structure rules. These are called transformational rules. These take a ‘branch of a tree’ away from one part of the tree diagram and attach it to a different part.

Chomsky (1957) assumed that people form sentences in a universal grammar and then modify these to meet our learned language. The deep structure represents the initial formation of a thought that we intend to speak, and the surface structure is the transformed thought into a specific language. That implies that on some level we all share a way of thinking, but at the level of spoken language we are limited to the language’s we have acquired.

After his view was criticised, he modified his concept and talked about a language acquisition toolkit, and to broaden the concept of deep/surface structure.

According to Aarts et al. (2014) deep and surface structures are often used as terms in a simple binary opposition, with the deep structure representing meaning, and the surface structure being the actual sentence we see.

Deep structure (Internal syntax)

In transformational generative grammar, deep structure of a sentence is the underlying syntactic structure. Deep structure is an abstract representation that identifies the ways a sentence can be analysed and interpreted. Deep structures are generated by phrase structure rules, while surface structures are derived from the deep structures by a series of transformations (Vitale, 1981; Nordquist, 2019).

Deep structure of linguistic expression is a theoretical construct that seeks to unify several related structures (Aarts et al., 2014; Chomsky, 1965). Deep structure represents the basis for the meaning of a sentence.

Nordquist (2019) states that deep structure is the underlying syntactic structure or level of a sentence, an abstract representation that identifies the two ways a sentence can be analysed and interpreted.

• [NP – Noun Phrase, VP – Verb Phrase]
  • ‘USipho milks the cow.’ USipho usenga inkomo.
  • USipho = NP USipho = NP
  • milks = VP usenga = VP
  • the cow = NP inkomo = NP

Surface structure (External syntax)

As alluded to the above, the syntactic component has two sub-components which are, the base component and the transformational component, and that the deep structure feeds into the transformational component, which is a set of rules that turn the deep structure into a surface structure. The surface structure basically serves as the input to the phonological component, as well as to some semantic rules.

The grammar must thus be capable of showing how a single underlying abstract representation can become different surface structures. In the movement rule an element is moved from its place to another place e.g., in the passive. The sentences below attempt to show this.

• ‘The cow was milked by Sipho.’
  • The cow = NP
  • was milked = VP
  • by Sipho = NP
  Inkomo isengwe nguSipho.
  • Inkomo = NP
  • isengwe = VP
  • nguSipho = NP

The difference between these sentences is in their surface structure. This difference disguises the fact that the two sentences are closely related, even identical at some level.

Surface structures are much more like structures abstracted directly from the forms of sentences by structuralists. Deep structures are the output of phrase structure rules and lexical rules: transformations operate on these and give rise to the surface structures, which in turn form the input to the phonological rules.

Aarts, B., Chalker, S. & Weiner, E. (2014) The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chomsky, N. (1957) Syntactic structures. London: Mouton.

Chomsky, N. (1965) Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Nordquist, R. (2019) Definition and examples of syntax. Thought Co.

Radford, A. (1988) Transformational Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Van Rooyen, C. S., Louw, J. A., Cantrell, J. V., Taljaard, P. C., Satyo, S. C., Ntuli, D. B. & Davey, A. S. (1982) Xhosa only guide for XHS201-3. Pretoria: University of South Africa.

Vitale, A. J. (1981) Swahili Syntax. Publications in Language Sciences. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.

Webster, M. (2019) Advanced Learners’ English Dictionary. Springfield: Oxford University Press.

Yule, G. (1996) The Study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.