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When examining syntax, or more specifically, sentence structure and the rules for forming sentences (much as morphology covered the rules for forming words), linguists use "Phase Structure Trees" containing "Syntactic Categories." This structure is designed to show the linear order of words within syntactic categories, which are "phrasal categories," or "lexical categories." Phrasal categories are, of course, made of phrases, such as noun phrases ("the cat" or ("the cat in the hat") or verb phrases ("sat" or "sat in the chair") [Fromkin and Rodman, 79-84].
Grammatical knowledge is inherent to the knowledge of the language. This includes not only using proper words, but knowledge of the proper order of the words. Some sentences may be syntactically correct but not be parseable because the words do not exist in the vocabulary of the recipient (such as Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky") [Fromkin and Rodman, 73-76]. Because the users of a language know the syntactic ordering of the language, they are able to parse an infinite number of sentences. Even if the reader has never seen the sentences:
Jack sat.
The cat sat.
The cat in the hat sat.
The cat sat in the chair.
The cat in the hat sat in the chair.
The reader can parse them because they are properly formed sentences. A linguist might use a phrase structure tree to parse the sentence into multiple phrasal and lexical categories, and the phrasal categories would themselves be parsed into multiple lexical categories. In English, the sentence is always formed of a Noun Phrase and a Verb Phrase. A Verb Phrase may have a Noun Phrase following the verb, making it the object of the sentence. Phrases are always one or more words possibly with grammatical morphemes. If an object is not present, by our innate knowledge of the language we know that the object of the sentence is the same as the subject of the sentence.
The sentence "Jack sat" and the sentence "the cat in the hat sat in the chair" each only have one noun phrase and one verb phrase. The second sentence has an object phrase ("in the chair," indicating the location of the action), but the sentences are essentially the same in structure. (English, and other languages, have prepositional phrases, which are prepositions followed by noun phrases.) The limitless aspect of language (continuing to add phrasal categories), such as in the "This is the House that Jack built" example earlier in this paper is called recursion. Because phrasal categories (particularly in noun phrases and prepositional phrases) can be added to provide greater precision, the ultimate sentence length is infinite, although sentences become unwieldy after a time and the listener or reader tend to dissociate the meaning from the action [Fromkin and Rodman, 78-87]. (I have been told a story about High German where the verb, which always comes at the end of the sentence, is the capstone which brings meaning. A professor was giving a lecture and continued in one long sentence. He had a heart attack and died before he could state the verb, which meant that his entire meaning was lost. This may be anecdotal, but it illustrates the problem of exceedingly long sentences.)
Phrase Structure Rules are the rules which a language follows, or more accurately, the linguist's interpretation of the rules. For example, in English, the Sentence (S) is always a Noun Phrase (NP) followed by a Verb Phrase (VP), represented as: S => NP P. A NP, then, is an optional article (Art) followed by a noun (N), or NP => (Art) N. A VP is a verb (V) followed by a NP and/or a prepositional phrase (PP), or VP => V (NP) (PP). And of course, a PP is a preposition (P) followed by a NP, or PP => P NP [Fromkin and Rodman, 87-89]. (It should be noted that this differs from Fromkin and Rodman in that I have indicated that the Art of a NP is optional, while Fromkin and Rodman indicate that it is not optional. The Art is, in fact, optional only when the noun involved is a proper noun, noun, or a pronoun that does not need a qualifier of number or location.) Of course, there may be additional modifiers to phrases, such as NP => (Art) (Adj)* N (PP), or VP => V (Adv)* (NP) (PP), where (Adj)* means zero, one or more adjectives, and (Adv)* means zero, one, or more adverbs [Fromkin and Rodman, 96-97]. In theory, perhaps, (PP)* would be the proper representation of (PP) in VP and NP. Other languages have different phrase structure rules, which, in turn, create different sentence (tree) structures. In Swedish, the NP rule would be stated as NP => N Art. In Japanese, the PP rule would be PP => NP P [Fromkin and Rodman, 94-95].
The lexicon is a vital part of the syntax, as well, for each word in the lexicon has attached to it the necessary syntactical rules. "Put," for example, might be represented as "put, V; put, NP PP," meaning that it requires both a NP and a PP within the VP [Fromkin and Rodman, 98-99]. Other words might require different combinations depending on the meaning and intent of the word (such as belief, which might be "belief, N; belief, (PP), belief, (S)") [Fromkin and Rodman, 99].
There are six types of language syntax: subject-verb-object, subject-object-verb, object-subject-verb, object-verb-subject, verb-subject-object, and verb-object-subject (abbreviated SVO, SOV, OSV, OVS, VSO, and VOS), with the most frequent being SVO, VSO, and SOV. Examples of each are English (SVO), Irish (VSO), Japanese (SOV), Panare from Venezuela (OVS), Xavante from Brazil (OSV), and Huave from Mexico (VOS). In VO languages (SVO, VSO, or VOS), auxiliary verbs ("to be," etc.) tend to precede the verb, adverbs tend to follow the verb, and prepositions tend to precede the noun. In OV languages (SOV, OSV, and OVS), most of which are SOV, like Japanese, auxiliary verbs tend to follow the verb, adverbs tend to precede the verb, and there are post-positions instead of prepositions. The VP phrase structure rule for an SVO language might be VP => V NP, whereas in Japanese, the VP phrase structure rule would be VP => NP V [Fromkin and Rodman, 110-111].
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