syntaktiskgrammatisk

The term syntaktiskgrammatisk refers to an interdisciplinary approach in linguistics that aims to unify the study of syntax and morphology within a single analytical framework. The word combines the Germanic root syntaktisch, meaning “syntactic,” with the English grammatical, reflecting its dual focus on sentence structure and grammatical form. It emerged in the late 20th century, largely in Scandinavian linguistic circles, as scholars sought to move beyond the traditional separation of syntax and morphology.

In syntaktiskgrammatisk theory, grammatical categories such as tense, number, and case are treated as features that can be assigned to syntactic constituents in the same way that syntactic rules determine the arrangement of phrases. This perspective is influenced by contemporary generative grammar, particularly feature theory and the concept of syntactic heads that bear grammatical features. Proponents argue that such an integrated model better accounts for language phenomena such as agreement, inflectional morphology in non‑concatenative languages, and the interface between syntactic derivation and morphological realization.

Key references include the works of Finnish linguist Tapio Saarelainen, who first coined the term in 1989, and the subsequent monographs by Swedish scholars Martin Ölander and Anna Storm, who applied the concept to a comparative study of North Germanic languages. Critics point to the complexity of reconciling phrasal analyses with the permutability of morphological forms, but many have found the syntaktiskgrammatisk approach useful in computational linguistics, where formalizing the interaction of syntax and morphology improves parsing algorithms.

The term continues to appear in linguistic literature, especially in discussions of morphological typology, inflectional paradigms, and the study of anomalous agreement patterns. Its influence is also evident in teaching resources that emphasize a holistic view of grammar, encouraging students to see syntax and morphology as complementary analyses rather than isolated subfields.