Syntactic Meaning
/sɪnˈtæktɪk/Definition, CEFR level C1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
adjOf, related to or connected with syntax.
adjContaining morphemes that are combined in the same order as they would be if they were separate words e.g. greenfinch
Sentence Examples
The basis for any language is its grammar and set of syntactic rules.
I read the article "Syntactic Nominalization in Halkomelem Salish."
CEFR Practice Quiz
The ____ rules of a language govern how words are arranged to form sentences.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The teacher explained the ____ rules of the language to help the students write more clear and correct sentences today.
Word Origin & History
From New Latin syntacticus, from Ancient Greek συντακτικός (suntaktikós).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"the rules specifying how agglutinative morphemes are combined with each other are more syntactic than morphological by their nature and thus are closer to rules specifying how word-forms are combined with each other."
— 2001, Martin Haspelmath, Language Typology and Language Universals: An International Handbook, page 674:
"Sometimes, a preposition like of just marks the function from a noun, as in the picture of the dog. Here, the function is picture, and of is a purely syntactic marker of the argument of picture, the dog. In this case, there is no semantics for the preposition of."
— 2025, Edward A. F. Gibson, “Dependency Grammar” (chapter 3), in Syntax: A Cognitive Approach, MIT Press, →DOI, →ISBN, pages 68–69:
Explore More C1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The ____ rules of a language govern how words are arranged to form sentences.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The teacher explained the ____ rules of the language to help the students write more clear and correct sentences today.