Rules of Syntax and Reasons for Production of Syntactical Errors

Syntax is the study of the structure of sentences which attempts to uncover the underlying principles, or rules, for constructing well- informed sentences of a particular language. According to Chomsky (1971), syntax is defined as the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis." There are two rules of syntax which are phrase structure rule and transformational rule and there are some reasons for the production of syntactical errors such as the speakers are having a bad day. Phrase Structure Rules govern the structure of sentences in a language. Phrasestructure rules were used in early transformational grammar (TGG) to describe a given language's syntax. This was accomplished by attempting to break language down into its constituent parts (also known as syntactic categories) namely phrasal categories and lexical categories (parts of speech). Phrasal categories include the noun phrase, verb phrase, and prepositional phrase; lexical categories include noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and many others. One example is the rule that English sentences must consist of a Noun Phrase (NP) and a Verb Phrase (VP). For example, The boy eats hurriedly. After that, we need to break the sentence into two parts which is The boy is a noun phrase and eats hurriedly is a verb phrase. Another example is, He gave her the book. The same concept also being applied which is we need to break the sentence into two constituent parts which is noun phrase and verb phrase. He is a noun phrase, whereas gave her the book is a verb phrase. There are three essential aspects of a

sentence structure, the constituency of a sentence; the units into which it can be divided, such as words and phrases, the labelling of those units (with labels like 'noun' or 'adjective phrase'), and the ordering of those units relative to one another for example, what comes before the verb, and what comes after, a crucial question in determining a sentence's meaning. A less obvious type of constituent is a phrase, which is a sequence of words which form a coherent group. Associated with phrase structure rules is a famous example of a grammatically correct sentence. The sentence was constructed by Chomsky (1971) as an illustration that syntactically but not semantically correct sentences are possible. The second rule in the study of syntax is called transformational rules. Frankly speaking, transformational rules can be interpreted as a string operation in a sentence, mapping one string onto another by three divided operations. Those are reordering, inserting and deleting. The existence of transformational rules is actually to help people to have better understanding of how to form a sentence. Differ from phrase structure rules, rather than just analysing the elements that are contained in a grammatically correct sentence, transformational rules provide understanding to the learners by the method of transforming a sentence to form a new one. Philip (2011) stated that in order to master a language, one should not just memorise long list of words or sentences but could also be able to form a new sentence. To know more about transformational rules, take a look at this sentence for an example, Zainal kicked the ball. In this sentence, we can say that it is grammatically correct as it have noun phrase and verb phrase. To apply transformational rules, we can rearrange the order of the elements in the sentence to become The ball was kicked by Zainal. In this case, the noun phrase

would be The ball and the verb phrase is was kicked by Zainal. Other than that, new word was also had been inserted into the sentence to act as auxiliary verb for completing the verb phrase. Although the structure of the sentence was changed but it is still following the grammar rules and now it had become a passive sentence. Second example, Sophia will bring the book. Apart from having noun phrase and verb phrase, the existence of auxiliary could also be noticed in this example when it is broken down into smaller details with the application of the tree diagram method. The sentence can be transformed as Will Sophia bring the book? by the inversion of the subject and the auxiliary. As a result, now the sentence had transformed from a declarative sentence to become a question and still, it is also grammatically correct. When a person could apply transformational rules in a sentence, it shows that the person had mastered the concepts of how a sentence is formed which will help him to form a sentence without syntactical errors. Syntactical errors happen when the two main rules of syntax which are phrase structural rule and transformational rule are not followed. In other words, it can be define as an incorrect arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language. When this happens the sentences can cause misunderstanding and in some cases they do not even have any meaning. Learning and studying the rules of syntax can help the people to talk and write meaningfully and grammatically. According to Suttle (2012) in his article entitled Top Ten Grammatical Errors- Errors of Syntax, he claims that The English Language can be tough to master, even if we have been using it our entire lives. From this extract, the writer tries to explain that syntactical errors can be happened to anyone, even if the speaker is a native speaker. It is clear that ones

cannot simply be free from making syntactical errors either in writing or speaking. In the same article, Suttle has listed some of the errors in syntax that commonly being created by the English speakers. One of the syntactical errors which is listed in there is the use of word toward. Most of the English speakers out there use the word toward toget her with a consonants at the end of the it. Suttle explains that it not necessarily to puts in there. Other example of syntactical errors is the use of words few and less. Gingerich (2012) argues that the word less is reserved for hypothetical quantities. Few and fewer are for things you can quantify. e.g., The firm has fewer than ten employees. e.g., The firm is less successful now that we have only ten employees. Those are some of the explanations on syntactical errors. There are some reasons for the production of syntactical errors. Case (2008) mentions ten reasons for production of syntactical errors in his article. One of the reasons is the speakers are not ready yet to use English. Learning language acquires a lot of practices. Ones cannot simply speak grammatically without enough practices. The next reason is the speakers think that grammar is not important. When this kind of mind-set is buried in their mind, they will recklessly creating lots of grammatical errors when they are talking. Case also claims that fatigue can affect the percentage of creating syntactical error. For instance, when people are having a bad day, they may mistakenly and unconsciously create some errors. This is happening because the situation that is faced by them is affecting their psychological and mind state which eventually encourages them to create mistakes. Those are some of the possible reason for the production of syntactical errors. Minimizing syntactical errors is not easy but there are some suggested ways that can be applied to reduce the production of

syntactical errors. Izea Rank (2009) suggests that people have to check for the agreement between all parts of sentence. For example, singular subject must agree with the verb so, the verb must be in singular form. The other tip to overcome this problem is by conveying one thought in a sentence. Rank opined that when people put more thoughts in a single sentence, it will lead to confusion in understanding. As a conclusion, errors in syntax could be identified in various settings. In order to avoid syntactical errors, people need to realise that it is very important to use grammatically correct sentences whether it is in speaking or writing. It is very necessary as it could avoid misunderstanding and misinterpretation that might happen because of errors in the sentences. Apart from that, people should also identify and be aware of the reasons and factors of syntactical errors. Moreover, everyone should give more attention on the rules of Syntax because by understanding those rules, it is easier to know what is right and what is wrong in forming a sentence thus would automatically boost our skills in the language which could prevent or minimize the production of syntactical errors.