sintaktik

Sintaktik is the branch of linguistics that studies how words combine to form phrases and sentences. It concerns the rules and constraints that govern sentence structure, the hierarchical organization of phrases (such as noun phrases and verb phrases) and the relationships between its parts, such as subject and predicate. The field focuses on the formal properties of syntax rather than sound (phonology) or meaning (semantics), though these areas interact in comprehensive models of language.

The study of sintaktik spans multiple theoretical traditions. Researchers analyze grammaticality, constituency, and dependencies, and compare how different languages assemble phrases. Major traditions include traditional phrase-structure grammars, dependency grammars, and various computational theories used in natural language processing. Generative grammar, popularized in the late 20th century, emphasizes deep structure and transformational rules, while other frameworks such as X-bar theory, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Tree Adjoining Grammar, and Construction Grammar offer alternative accounts of how syntactic structures are built and related. Cross-linguistic variation and universal grammar are common themes in contemporary sintaktik research.

Applications of sintaktik include linguistic description, language teaching, and natural language processing. In NLP, syntactic analysis or parsing assigns a hierarchical structure to sentences, enabling tasks such as information extraction, machine translation, and question answering. In the study of programming languages, syntax defines the legal form of programs and governs how source code is written and parsed by compilers.

Etymologically, sintaktik derives from Greek syntaktikos, meaning “putting together.” The term is used in many languages with largely parallel meanings, referring to the rules and structures that organize how words combine into larger units.