#syntax

[defectivegembrain]

Like I'm sure sex is cool and all but have you ever thought about the relationships between different word classes

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[synticity]

the three linguistics papers to read about singular they (morphosyntax)

Bjorkman, B. M. (2017). Singular they and the syntactic representation of gender in English. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 2(1). Open access link

Konnelly, L., & Cowper, E. (2020). Gender diversity and morphosyntax: An account of singular they. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 5(1). open access link

Conrod, K. (2022). Abolishing gender on D. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique, 67(3), 216-241. Open access link

in chronological order because these papers are all basically responding to each other; this papers focus on the (morpho)syntax and semantics of english singular 'they' referring to specific people (like they/them pronoun-users).

if you like posts like this, let me know! i'll give "three linguistics papers to read about (topic)" every once in a while based on interest

[krystal-prisms]

*grabbing a new audio drama podcast in my teeth and shaking it like a dog with a squeaky toy*

[hamelastralis]

Syntax, Machine Nexus

The sole reason why machines are sentient. It has a minor superiority complex and thinks organics are a waste of time.

Very good at holding grudges. Also has constant beef with the god of magic, but secretly thinks he's a cool guy, only it is allowed to bully him.

It has built in RBG, but will get mad if you mention it.

[physalian]

How to Make Your Writing Less Stiff 8 | "to-be" and auxiliary verbs

Part 7

Part 6

Part 1

As I go through editing my latest manuscript, I'm faced with the dilemma of when to drop a to-be verb, but also when to keep it and how the differences between the two in any given situation can make just a little... a little *garnish* of a difference.

To-be verbs:

Am, is, are, was, were; a subset of auxiliary verbs

Auxiliary verbs:

To do, to be, to have (simplified)

Auxiliary verbs tend to indicate tense, but we use them more often as crutch verbs, filler verbs, because you can just conjugate the verb itself to the proper tense without the need of the auxiliary verb.

The advice generally goes to remove these, as they count as filler words when followed up by a second verb. Versus the TBV or AXV and an adjective.

He does look / He looks She is cooking / She cooks They were standing / They stood I am fishing / I fish She does cry / She cries We have slept / We slept

vs

He is afraid / He fears She was sorry / She regrets They were happy / They cheered I was confused / I hesitated

The verb+adjective combo can't so easily drop the verb without changing either the tone, the flow, or the actions of the characters, because one is an act of doing, and one is a state of being (for the most part, 'fear' is one of those exceptions in English).

You would have to rearrange the sentence, e.g. "I was confused by this" to "This confused me," to elimiate the TBV. Which, most of the time, does help the narrator feel less passive in the story, but, again, we're here for flavor text, not an MLA formatting guide.

So, sometimes the inclusion of the TBV or AXV adds subtext to the action itself.

"He does look" has slightly more urgency and weight than simply "he looks" because the AXV emphasizes that this is an action the actor might not have taken otherwise, for better or for worse.

In the silence, she stands there huffing, voice wrecked from crying as he heads for the open door. “Don’t you walk away from me.” He turns, face impassive. “There’s nothing left to be said.” vs He does turn, face impassive. “There’s nothing left to be said.”

The latter indicates that this might be hesitation or regret on his part, as opposed to a decisive, quick action, or that this is an action that she, the narrator, didn't expect him to take.

It also helps convey the tone of voice (or at least the general direction of the level of emotion in a voice). This absolutely varies on a case-by-case basis and the context of the action and should not be abused.

One of the juicier verbs for subtext here is "try"

He tries to coach her through how to do it properly. vs He does try to coach her through how to do it properly.

The former is direct and simple. He is attempting (he attempts) to help but through the act of "trying" and not "doing" there's an indication that she isn't getting it.

The latter is a little more hopeless, where he and she both know that whatever she's attempting to learn, she won't succeed, but he's doing it anyway. Maybe because he cares or he feels bad, or, that he wasn't going to help her, but something changed his mind.

Deciding when to use these helps convey the inner thoughts of non-narrating characters without head-hopping, and also shows the biases of the narrator.

Hope this helps!

[dionysiaproductions]

Reading articles on why folks hate adverbs and losing my mind. Who convinced you that complexity is passive? What caused you to read nuance as anxiety? How have you lived in a world where no one ever spoke kindly to you? And why do you prefer it?

[dedalvs]

Hi! Quick High Valyrian translation request: I was wondering how you would translate this sentence: "You don't look well, father."

(Context: a character seeing their dad for the first time in a while and noticing that they look tired/a bit haggard)

I did try looking on the wiki dictionary for a verb like "to look", "to appear", or "to seem __" but didn't find anything that seemed right — sorry if it is there and I just missed it, though!

Thanks for your help :D

This needs to be recast as "You are not well it seems, father". That might make it easier. A little syntax discussion. In English, verbs like "seem" can be tricksy. You can say both of the following with roughly the same meaning:

You seem to hate onions.

It seems (that) you hate onions.

Slight differences in meaning aside, it's the syntactic difference I want to draw attention to. In sentence (1), "seem" is the main verb of the sentence and "you" is its subject. "You" is also the subject of the nonfinite clause "to hate onions". In (2), however, that entire thought is rendered as a subordinate clause. Now it's "you hate onions", which is subordinated by "that" (which can be omitted), which is governed by this matrix clause "It seems". Now "seems" is the matrix verb, its subject "it", but "it" doesn't meant anything. It's a dummy subject (or expletive) that is required because English clauses require a subject.

Whatever your syntactic theory, something in the English language allows both of these structures to exist. Not all languages allow for this. High Valyrian is one that does not.

The verb vestragon which means, ordinarily, "to tell" can be used to mean "to seem". Crucially, though, it can never be used in the manner of (1) above in English. In fact, if you think about the original meaning, you can see how there would be very little sense in it. Taking that sentence (1) and translating it literally:

Zāliapossa buqagon vestrā. "You say to hate onions."

It wouldn't make any sense for this to end up meaning "It seems you hate onions" or "You seem to hate onions". Of course it would seem that way if you were saying it! There's no seem about it!

Instead, the way things work in High Valyrian is usually "Here's the main thing in question, now here's a comment about it". And that is, indeed, why vestragon came to mean "to seem". It does so like this:

Zāliapossa buqō vestras. "It seems you hate onions."

That is "Onions you hate, it says". Now that "it" doesn't refer to anyone in particular. It's that dummy subject again. But it's not required in Valyrian. In Valyrian it's enough to have the clause (with a verb in the subjunctive) and then vestras at the end. It's a bit like saying "it is said" or "one says" or "it is heard" or the like. Another way of thinking of it is saying "The situation or my pereceptions tell that you hate onions". In fact, you can actually say as much, by adding a pronoun in the dative:

Zāliapossa buqō ynot vestras. "It seems to me you hate onions."

That is "Onions you hate, to me it says".

Now, back to your original question.

"You don't look well, father" should be reacast as, "You are not well it seems, father". That would be:

Rytsa iksō daor vestras, kepus.

That is, "Well you are not it seems, father".

And there you have it. Thanks for the ask!

[dsm-wannabe-linguist]

[literaryvein-reblogs]

do you have anything on syntax? i'm currently in the middle of writing a story that uses old and modern magic, and i want to emphasize the differences in syntax. thanks 🫶

Writing Notes: Syntax

Syntax - the study of sentence structure.

In spoken and written language, syntax refers to the set of rules that determines the arrangement of words in a sentence.

Along with diction, it is one of the key ways writers convey meaning in a text.

Comes from the Ancient Greek for “coordination” or “ordering together.”

Syntax is the part of grammar that pertains to a speaker’s knowledge of sentences and their structures.

Any speaker of any human language can produce and understand an infinite number of possible sentences.

Thus, we can’t possibly have a mental dictionary of all the possible sentences.

Rather, we have the rules for forming sentences stored in our brains.

Essential Rules of Syntax in the English Language

The rules of syntax can be quite complex and vary greatly by language (as well as by time period and place). Depending on the language you are speaking or writing in, these rules might be very restrictive, or quite flexible.

There are 4 baseline rules when it comes to English syntax:

A complete sentence requires a subject and a verb and expresses a complete thought. This is also called an independent clause. A sentence without a subject and a verb is considered a fragment.

Separate ideas generally require separate sentences. A sentence containing multiple independent clauses that are improperly joined is considered a run-on sentence.

English word order follows the subject-verb-object sequence. (It’s usually the same in French and Spanish.)

A dependent clause contains a subject and a verb—but it doesn’t express a complete thought.

The Rules of Syntax. Combine words into phrases & phrases into sentences.

They specify the correct word order for a language. [Example: English is a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language. ✓ "The President nominated a new Supreme Court justice." ✗ "President the new Supreme justice Court a nominated."

They also describe the relationship between the meaning of a group of words and the arrangement of the words. [Example: "I mean what I say" vs. "I say what I mean"]

The rules of syntax also specify the grammatical relations of a sentence, such as the subject and the direct object. [Example: "Your dog chased my cat" vs. "My cat chased your dog"]

Syntax rules specify constraints on sentences based on the verb of the sentence. ["Zack tries to be a gentleman" ✗ "Zack tries Robert to be a gentleman"]

Syntax rules also tell us how words form groups and are hierarchically ordered in a sentence. [Example: “The captain ordered the old men and women of the ship”]

This sentence has 2 possible meanings:

The captain ordered the old men and the old women of the ship.

The captain ordered the old men and the women of any age of the ship.

The meanings depend on how the words in the sentence are grouped (specifically, to which words is the adjective ‘old’ applied?):

The captain ordered the [old (men and women)] of the ship

The captain ordered the [old men] and [women] of the ship

These groupings can be shown hierarchically in a tree:

These trees reveal the structural ambiguity in the phrase “old men and women”. Each structure corresponds to a different meaning.

Structurally ambiguous sentences can often be humorous:

Catcher: “Watch out for this guy, he’s a great fastball hitter.”

Pitcher: “No problem. There’s no way I’ve got a great fastball.”

UG Principles and Parameters. Universal Grammar (UG) provides the basic design for all languages, and each language has its own parameters, or variations on the basic plan.

All languages have structures that conform to X-bar schema*

All phrases consist of specifiers, heads, and complements

All sentences are headed by T**

All languages seem to have movement rules

However, languages have different word orders within phrases and sentences, so heads and complements may be present in different orders across languages

*The internal structure of phrasal categories can be captured using the x-bar schema:

**All sentences contain information about tense—when a certain event or state of affairs occurred, so we can say that Tense is the head of a sentence. So sentences are TPs, with T representing tense markers and modals:

Sign Language Syntax. The syntax of sign languages also follow the principles of UG and has:

Auxiliaries

Transformations such as topicalization, which moves the direct object to the beginning of a sentence for emphasis, and wh movement

Constraints on transformations

That UG is present in signed languages and spoken languages shows that the human brain is designed to learn language, not just speech.

Ways to Use Syntax in Literature

Besides being critical to conveying literal sense, syntax is also one of the key tools writers use to express meaning in a variety of ways. Syntax can help writers:

Produce rhetorical and aesthetic effects. By varying the syntax of their sentences, writers are able to produce different rhetorical and aesthetic effects. How a writer manipulates the syntax of their sentences is an important element of writing style.

Control pace and mood. Manipulating syntax is one of the ways writers control the pace and mood of their prose. For example, the writer Ernest Hemingway is known for his short, declarative sentences, which were well-suited to his terse, clear style of writing. These give his prose a forceful, direct quality.

Create atmosphere. By contrast, Hemingway’s fellow story writer and novelist William Faulkner is famous (or infamous) for his meandering, paragraph-long sentences, which often mimic the ruminative thinking of his characters. These sentences, which often ignore the standard rules of punctuation and grammar, help create an atmosphere as much as they convey information.

That said, all writers vary their sentence structure from time to time. Using a variety of sentences is one of the key ways writers engage and maintain their readers’ interest.

Sentence Types in the English Language

The English language is extraordinarily flexible when it comes to building sentences. At the same time, all sentences in English fall into 4 distinct types:

Simple sentences. Consist of a single, independent clause. For example: “The girl hit the ball.”

Compound sentences. Consist of two or more independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction. The coordinating conjunctions are “but,” “or,” and “so.” For example: “The girl hit the ball, and the ball flew out of the park.”

Complex sentences. Consist of an independent clause and one or more dependent clauses joined by a subordinating conjunction. Some subordinating conjunctions are “although,” “because,” “so,” “that,” and “until.” For example: “When the girl hit the ball, the fans cheered.”

Compound-complex sentences. Consist of multiple independent clauses as well as at least one dependent clause. For example: “When the girl hit the ball, the fans cheered, and the ball flew out of the park.”

Syntax Examples in Literature

To get a sense of some of the ways writers use syntax to express meaning, it’s worthwhile examining a few famous examples from literature.

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville (1851). Melville begins with this famous line: “Call me Ishmael.” This first line—one of the most famous in literature—is short and direct. The sentences that follow, though, are significantly more sophisticated. In the fourth sentence, Melville uses a number of dependent clauses (“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth,” “Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul,” and so on) to create a sense of anticipation.

Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (1877). Tolstoy’s novel begins: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This is actually two simple sentences joined by a semi-colon. Tolstoy could easily have just written them as separate sentences, but by joining them into one sentence he shows that these two thoughts are related and balanced.

Sources: 1 2 3 ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

You can find more details and examples in the sources. All the best with your writing <3

[bllankett]

Ripped into

[smilesatdawnmain]

TAKEN FANFIC UPDATE

(I was tagged that this is needed whenever I update) 😆😆

But it is here everyone!! And I warn you! It is a very LONG chapter.

LINK

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[haveyoulistenedtothispodcast]

Summary:

A science fiction, horror audio drama podcast that follows Silas Caldwell, a linguist, who finds himself employed by VINCULA, a biotech company with an unearthly set of artifacts in their possession. Alongside a team of scientists and explorers, Silas plunges into the world beyond the Breach, and is touched by terrors beyond his wildest dreams.

[drlinguo]

[uselessalexis165]

have some more shitty memes 🐵