3. Basic syntactic notions

Analysis and description of syntactic level units require special syntactic terms to denote basic syntactic notions. The following seven are considered basic syntactic notions.

A syntactic unit is always a combination of at least two components, both of which are notional (in contrast to any analytical word, which though composed of two or more elements is a morphological unit). Hence, syntactic units are all those located above the word in the language hierarchy: the phrase (word-group or word combination), syntactic non-clausal units, the clause, the sentence, the super-phrasal unity and the text. Each of them is characterized by the following main features:

• It is a level unit, referring to either of two upper levels of the language hierarchy: syntactic or super-syntactic.

• It is a hierarchical unit, formed from the units of the immediately lower level of the language hierarchy.

• It is a bilateral unit, obligatory possessing two planes: the plane of content (meaning) and the plane of expression (form).

• It is of systemic character, as it establishes PR and SR.

• It is linear in order, as its constituents stand in SR with each other.

• It may be either non-communicative (phrases and clauses) or communicative in nature (sentences, super-phrasal unities, texts, discourse).

Syntactic meaning is the way in which the meanings of components are combined to form a phrase (word-group or word combination), a sentence, etc. This notion is complex, including part-of-speech meaning and also lexical and grammatical valency of each component.

In the example below, the grammatical relations between the components are of regular character, but the lexical valency of the components is violated, which results in the loss of sense: Green ideas sleep furiously.

Syntactic form is the distributional pattern of a syntactic unit. In the examples below, syntactic form of the sentences is given in parentheses as the distributional pattern: Green ideas sleep furiously (NP + V + D).

Syntactic function is the feature of a linguistic unit due to which it is included into a larger unit. Hence, syntactic function of linguistic units is the base for the part-of-the-sentence theory. The example below shows that due to the attributive function in relation to head-word girl the word smiling is included into the noun phrase

Syntactic position is a definite order of components within a syntactic unit. The order of components is of primary importance for languages of analytic organization. It is syntactic position that determines relations established between the unit concerned and other units within a syntactic construction in analytic languages.

The example below shows how the established type of syntactic relations depends on the syntactic position of the word. For instance, back: his broad back (n); a back district (adj); to go back (adv); to hack somebody (v).

Thus, in languages of analytical grammatical organization syntactic position of a linguistic unit determines its part-of-speech reference and affects its lexical meaning.