Syntax

Definition:
(1) In linguistics, the study of the rules that govern the ways in which words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. Syntax is one of the major components of grammar.
(2) The arrangement of words in a sentence. Adjective: syntactic.Examples and Observations:

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."
(Linguist Noam Chomsky created this sentence--which is grammatically correct but incomprehensible--to demonstrate that the rules governing syntax are distinct from the meanings words convey.)

"It is a mistake to believe that some English speakers follow rules in their speech and others do not. Instead, it now appears that all English speakers are successful language learners: they all follow unconscious rules derived from their early language development, and the small differences in the sentences that they prefer are best understood as coming from small differences in these rules. . . . The differences of the sort that we are looking at here follow lines of social class and ethnic group rather than geographical lines. Thus we can speak of social varieties or social dialects."
(Carl Lee Baker, English Syntax, 2nd ed. MIT Press, 1995)

"Within traditional grammar, the syntax of a language is described in terms of a taxonomy (i.e. the classificatory list) of the range of different types of syntactic structures found in the language. The central assumption underpinning syntactic analysis in traditional grammar is that phrases and sentences are built up of a series of constituents (i.e. syntactic units), each of which belongs to a specific grammatical category and serves a specific grammatical function. Given this assumption, the task of the linguist analysing the syntactic structure of any given type of sentence is to identify each of the constituents in the sentence, and (for each constituent) to say what category it belongs to and what function it serves. . . .

"In contrast to the taxonomic approach adopted in traditional grammar, [Noam] Chomsky takes a cognitive approach to the study of grammar. For Chomsky, the goal of the linguist is to determine what it is that native speakers know about their native language which enables them to speak and understand the language fluently: hence, the study of language is part of the wider study of cognition (i.e. what human beings know). In a fairly obvious sense, any native speaker of a language can be said to know the grammar of his or her native language."
(Andrew Radford, English Syntax: An Introduction. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004)

"Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis."
(Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, 1971)

"Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar-room vernacular, that is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive."
(Raymond Chandler)

"Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints--the rules that run us. Language is using us to talk--we think we’re using the language, but language is doing the thinking, we’re its slavish agents."
(Harry Mathews)