Quotes About Syntax

plural is generally formed from the singular by the addition of s or es.

Why are they going to disappear him?' I don't know.' It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar.

En los relatos de mamá, de la abuela, de la tía, estaban los grandes almacenes de historias. Sus voces han formado mi sintaxis, mis frases escritas no son más largas que el aliento que se precisa para pronunciarlas".

Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of the vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds.

Ils en conclurent que la syntaxe est une fantaisie et la grammaire une illusion.

You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.

Obama's gift for delivering set-piece oratorical tours de force had special resonance to Americans fed up with a president who could hardly string two words together without a collision of syntax and whose idea of clever was the single entendre.

Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar.

Who climbs the grammar-tree, distinctly knows Where noun, and verb, and participle grows.

Grammar and ordinary language are bad guides to metaphysics. A great book might be written showing the influence of syntax on philosophy.

Try not to live in a linguistic slum.

Even when I use a word in the wrong order in a sentence, I get mad. It's very stressful.

I thought that strange syntax was the language of story books. I didn't realize those were poor translations... English from Edwardian times.

Our memory fragments don't have any coherence until they're imagined in words. Time is a property of language, of syntax, and tense.

And the words slide into the slots ordained by syntax, and glitter as with atmospheric dust with those impurities which we call meaning.

the focus one finds in the grammar books is on the wrong forms, on forms detached from the underlying (or overarching) form that must be in place before any technical terms can be meaningful or alive

What is a sentence, anyway?

Language is more fashion than science

Their syntax and choice of words affirm their superiority. You cannot live on a high plane and indulge yourself in verbiage.

Subordinating conjunctions are a much larger set. They include after, although, as, because, before, if, since, than, though, unless, until, when, and while.

Subordinating conjunctions relegate clauses to a lower grammatical status. Subordination means that what was a whole sentence is whole no more. It's a mere subordinate clause.

The job of a subordinating conjunction is (drum roll, please) to subordinate. It relegates a clause to a lower grammatical status in the sentence.

If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.

Just having an abstract conversation about linguistic parallelism.