| 释义 |
syntax|ˈsɪntæks|
Also 7 syntaxe.
[ad. F. syntaxe, † sintaxe, ad. late L. syntaxis, a. Gr. σύνταξις syntaxis.]
1. a. Orderly or systematic arrangement of parts or elements; constitution (of body); a connected order or system of things.
1605Bacon Adv. Learn. ii. xix. §1. 69 b, Concerning the Syntax and disposition of studies, that men may know in what order or pursuite to reade. 1661Glanvill Van. Dogm. xii. 116 They owe no other dependence to the first, then what is common to the whole Syntax of beings. a1676Hale Prim. Orig. Man. ii. iv. (1677) 157 Perchance..no Man had ever the same Syntax of Phantasie or Imagination that he had. 1696Edwards Demonstr. Exist. God ii. 124 This single [argument] from the fabrick and syntax of man's body is sufficient to evince the truth of a Deity. 1959J. D. Evans Malta ii. 67 The decoration [of certain pottery]..derives its general syntax fairly exactly and its patterns in a more general way from the repertoire of the preceding phases. 1965Listener 9 Dec. 965/2 We have to work to reconcile the shiny shoe with the flat red floor or with the absurd loopy shapes of the legs, or the crushed, pulpy mask of the head. For not only is the syntax of the paint disconnected and inconsistent, but the degree of distortion is too. 1967G. Steiner Lang. & Silence 380 A young East German might come to be more at home, in the syntax of his politics and feelings, in Peking or Albania than in Cologne.
†b. Physical connexion, junction. Obs.
1615Crooke Body of Man 595 Their articulation doth not differ from the Syntax or coniunction of other parts.
†c. Connexion, congruity, agreement. Obs.
1656S. Holland Zara (1719) 123 What Syntax is there betwixt a Helmet and a Cap of Maintenance? 1675R. Burthogge Causa Dei p. vi, I might display the Syntax, Harmony, Connexion, Concinnity of the Notions I employ.
d. That branch of mathematics which deals with the various arrangements of a number of things, as permutations, combinations, and the like.
1861Sylvester Coll. Math. Papers (1908) II. 269 The theory of groups.., standing in the closest relation to the doctrine of combinatorial aggregation, or what for shortness may be termed syntax.
2. Gram., etc.
a. The arrangement of words (in their appropriate forms) by which their connexion and relation in a sentence are shown. Also, the constructional uses of a word or form or a class of words or forms, or those characteristic of a particular author.
b. The department of grammar which deals with the established usages of grammatical construction and the rules deduced therefrom: distinguished from accidence, which deals with the inflexional forms of words as such.
1613R. Cawdrey Table Alph. (ed. 3), Syntaxe, construction and order of words. 1636B. Jonson Eng. Gram. ii. i, Syntaxe is the second part of Grammar, that teacheth the Construction of words. Ibid. ii. ii, The Syntaxe of a Noune, with a Noune, is in number, and gender. Ibid. v, The Syntaxe of a Verb with a Noune is in number, and person. 1697Bentley Phal. (1699) 407 Neither Sense nor Syntax would allow of that Signification. a1700Evelyn Diary 27 Jan. 1658, He..could make congruous syntax, turne English into Latine, and vice versa. 1711Greenwood Eng. Gram. 29 The Syntax, or Construction of the Noun, is chiefly perform'd by the Help of certain Words call'd Prepositions. 1755Johnson Dict., Gram. a, Grammar, which is the art of using words properly, comprises four parts; Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody. 1824L. Murray Engl. Gram. (ed. 5) I. 217 The English adjective, having but a very limited syntax. 1861Paley æschylus, Prometh. (ed. 2) 38 note, Ὅτου..being used as if the syntax were δεῖξαι ὑϕ' ὅτου, rather than δεῖξαι τὸ βούλευµα ὑϕ' οὗ κ.τ.λ. 1885Grosart Nashe's Wks. VI. p. ix, He writes..with uncultured flabbiness, and with irritating syntax.
c. Name of a class in certain English Roman Catholic schools and colleges, next below that called poetry (see poetry 6).
1629Wadsworth Pilgr. iii. 13 Father Lacy, the Reader of Poetry, and Master of the Syntax. 1655in Foley Rec. Eng. Prov. S. J. (1878) III. 434, I went to the College of St. Omer, where I made one year's syntax. 1679[see poetry 6]. 1713in B. Ward Hist. St. Edmund's College (1893) iv. 58 What we call the Accidence they call Figures, which they divide into two years, one for the lower, the second for the higher, the third for grammar, the fourth for Syntax. 1897W. Ward Life Cdl. Wiseman (ed. 2) I. i. 8 Dr. Newsham..was Wiseman's Professor [at Ushaw] in Syntax (in 1815), and again in Rhetoric.
d. transf. in Logic. The order and arrangement of the words or symbols forming a logical sentence; the rules operating in formal systems. (See quots.)
1922tr. Wittgenstein's Tractatus 59 The rules of logical syntax must follow of themselves, if we only know how every single sign signifies. 1937A. Smeaton tr. Carnap's Logical Syntax of Lang. 1 By the logical syntax of a language, we mean the formal theory of the linguistic forms of that language—the systematic statement of the formal rules which govern it together with the development of the consequences which follow from these rules. Ibid. 2 Thus we are justified in designating as ‘logical syntax’ the system which comprises the rules of formation and transformation. 1937, etc. [see metalogic]. 1940W. V. Quine Math. Logic. vii. 286 Discourse which is ‘formal’ in this sense, and hence translatable into the notation just now described, is called metamathematics, formal syntax, or briefly syntax. 1955A. N. Prior Formal Logic iii. 70 But as it happens—this can be shown from outside the system— no set of axioms and rules for a system containing its own syntax ever is ‘complete’. 1979J. A. Robinson Logic: Form & Function ii. 8 The predicate calculus has a simple, systematic basic syntax, whose principal feature is the characterization of the class of expressions that are its formulas.
e. Computing. In extended use (from sense 2 a) with reference to programming languages.
1958Communications Assoc. Computing Machinery Dec. 11 In the sequel explicit rules—and associated interpretations—will be given describing the syntax of the language. 1980P. Cress et al. Structured Fortran with WATFIV-S i. 8 WATFIV-S not only compiles the FORTRAN program, but detects errors in syntax while doing so. 1981R. D. Tennent Princ. Programming Languages ii. 25 An abstract syntax tells us what syntactic structures are available in a language, but does not specify which strings of characters are well-formed program texts, nor their phrase structures.
3. attrib. and Comb., as syntax diagram, syntax table; syntax-directed adj.; syntax language, the language used to refer to the syntactical forms of an object language; a metalanguage.
1980L. V. Atkinson Pascal Programming i. 10 The syntax of a programming language can be conveniently illustrated by ‘syntax diagrams’.
1961Communications Assoc. Computing Machinery IV. 51 (heading) A syntax directed compiler for Algol 60. 1972J. J. Donovan Systems Programming vii. 228 A syntax-directed compiler uses a data base containing the syntactical rules of a source language to parse..the source-language input.
1935Syntax language [see object language 1]. 1956A. Church Introd. Math. Logic 58 The meta-language used in order to study the logistic system..is called the syntax language. 1961Communications Assoc. Computing Machinery IV. 55/1 The descriptions are added to the syntax tables used for the second phase, which invokes diagram to output the assembly language program. |