Quotes About Syntax

Tonally, the jagged syntax of 'Inch-thick', the Ovidian lyricism of 'O Proserpina' and Autolycus's bawdy swagger show Shakespeare at his widest-ranging. This is total mastery. Nobody had taken the English language further, and nobody has done so since.

Grammar, which knows how to control even kings.

A literal is syntax that allows you to define a reference value without explicitly creating an object, using the new operator and the object's constructor.

The syntactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretation and a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation.

Hence, a generative grammar must be a system of rules that can iterate to generate an indefinitely large number of structures. This system of rules can be analyzed into the three major components of a generative grammar: the syntactic, phonological, and semantic components.

Vocabulary and grammar are your primary tools. They're most effectively used, even most effectively abused, by people who understand them.

hear the language, this English, double-jointed as Bedivere's limbs. It only sounds awkward. In its ability to join one concept to another as with pegs, its dependent clauses, figures of speech and cadenced alliteration, a man can say one thing five ways and yet imply a sixth; can change meaning with an inflection, a pause or a deliberate misuse of a word, can mock, scorn and flay an opponent without uttering one overt insult.

To be sure, many adult second language learners achieve excellent language skills. One often sees reference to Joseph Conrad, a native speaker of Polish who became a major writer in the English language, and it is not uncommon to find adult second language learners with a rich vocabulary, sophisticated syntax, and effective pragmatic skills, even though there may be subtle differences between their language use and that of those who began learning the language while very young.

If you write "judgement" you should also write "colour" and "tyre.

But the same in the plural in ia must be. E, or i, are the ablative's ends,—mark my song, While or to the nominative case doth belong; For the neuter aforesaid we settle it thus: The plural is ora; the singular us.

First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing because verbing weirds language. Then they arrival for the nouns, and I speech nothing because I no verbs.

My poetry is who I am down to the core, even though I do not write autobiographical verse. I have built a syntax and a language to understand myself in the world."—Peter Gizzi