In linguistics, syntax (/ˈsɪntæks/ SIN-taks) is the study of how words and morphemes well-formed combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), agreement, the nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning (semantics). Diverse approaches, such as generative grammar and functional grammar, offer unique perspectives on syntax, reflecting its complexity and centrality to understanding human language.
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👉 Syntax (linguistics) in the context of Syntactic ambiguity
Syntactic ambiguity, also known as structural ambiguity, amphiboly, or amphibology, is characterized by the potential for a sentence to yield multiple interpretations due to its ambiguous syntax. This form of ambiguity is not derived from the varied meanings of individual words but rather from the relationships among words and clauses within a sentence, concealing interpretations beneath the word order. Consequently, a sentence presents as syntactically ambiguous when it permits reasonable derivation of several possible grammatical structures by an observer.
In jurisprudence, the interpretation of syntactically ambiguous phrases in statutory texts or contracts may be done by courts. Occasionally, claims based on highly improbable interpretations of such ambiguities are dismissed as being frivolous litigation and without merit. The term parse forest refers to the collection of all possible syntactic structures, known as parse trees, that can represent the ambiguous sentence's meanings. The task of clarifying which meaning is actually intended from among the possibilities is known as syntactic disambiguation.