CHAPTER I.
ON SYNTAX IN GENERAL.
[§ 467]. The word syntax is derived from the Greek syn (with or together), and taxis (arrangement). It relates to the arrangement, or putting together of words. Two or more words must be used before there can be any application of studied syntax.
Much that is considered by the generality of grammarians as syntax, can either be omitted altogether, or else be better studied under another name.
[§ 468]. To reduce a sentence to its elements, and to show that these elements are, 1, the subject, 2, the predicate, 3, the copula; to distinguish between simple terms and complex terms,—this is the department of logic.
To show the difference in force of expression, between such a sentence as great is Diana of the Ephesians, and Diana of the Ephesians is great, wherein the natural order of the subject and predicate is reversed, is a point of rhetoric.
I am moving.—To state that such a combination as I am moving is grammatical, is undoubtedly a point of syntax. Nevertheless it is a point better explained in a separate treatise, than in a work upon any particular language. The expression proves its correctness by the simple fact of its universal intelligibility.
I speaks.—To state that such a combination as I speaks,
admitting that I is exclusively the pronoun in the first person, and that speaks is exclusively the verb in the third, is undoubtedly a point of syntax. Nevertheless, it is a point which is better explained in a separate treatise, than in a work upon any particular language. An expression so ungrammatical, involves a contradiction in terms, which unassisted common sense can deal with. This position will again be reverted to.
There is to me a father.—Here we have a circumlocution equivalent to I have a father. In the English language the circumlocution is unnatural. In the Latin it is common. To determine this, is a matter of idiom rather than of syntax.