syntacticadj.
/sɪnˈtaktɪk/, U.S. /sɪnˈtæktɪk/ 1.
a. Of, relating to, or involving syntax, esp. grammatical syntax.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > language > linguistics > study of grammar > syntax or word order > [adjective]
syntactical1577
syntaxical1592
syntactic1688
tactical1698
synthetic1778
compositional1815
grammatical1874
taxis1885
syntagmatic1937
lexotactic1966
1688 S. Hoadly Nat. Method Teaching sig. A3 To cause the same words to be fetched over again in the Genders, Comparisons, Declensions, Conjugations and Syntactick Rules.
1748 ‘Scriblerus’ Marrow of Tickler's Wks. p. viii The Manager's Task is, to study Steel's English Grammar..as he is to have the Syntactic Part of this elaborate, and original Piece of Criticism.
1776 G. Campbell Philos. of Rhetoric I. ii. iv. 504 There are particularly some [anomalies] in our own [tongue]..which..it is much more difficult to reconcile to the syntactic order.
1847 C. Dickens Dombey & Son (1848) xi. 102 The pursuit of stoney-hearted verbs, savage noun-substantives, inflexible syntactic passages.
1852 J. S. Blackie On Stud. Lang. 7 The grand fundamental types of verbal flexion, and syntactic dependence.
1928 Musical Q. 14 334 No bars or regular measures trammel the flow of its melodic words, syntactic groupings and phrases.
1940 Jrnl. Symbolic Logic 5 41 It is then possible to introduce special syntactic formation rules..so that propositions involving imperatives are deducible.
2001 R. Paul Lang. Disorders from Infancy through Adolescence (ed. 2) xii. 423 Identify syntactic structures that might be causing difficulty. Some likely candidates include..sentences with unusual word order.
b. Of a language: having a complex syntax, esp. expressing grammatical relationships through compound words or inflected forms; (sometimes) = synthetic adj. 6.
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1816 P. S. Du Ponceau Let. 31 July in Trans. Hist. & Lit. Comm. Amer. Philos. Soc. (1819) 1 402 As I have given to the Chinese and its kindred dialects, the name of asyntactic, the opposite name, syntactic, appears to me that which is best suited to the languages of the American Indians.
1841 R. Park Pantology i. iii. 55 Most of the European languages are highly syntactic; changing the forms of words, to express variations of number, person, [etc.].
1852 E. G. Holland Ess. 161 Chinese..has no affinity whatever, with the polysyllabic, and the syntactic languages of India.
1975 Sci. News 108 383/1 The next step toward syntactic language would be separating the endings from a particular cry and attaching them to another with the same indication.
2005 J. A. Arieti Philos. in Anc. World v. 88 His prose exploited all the vices of which the highly inflective and highly syntactic Greek language was capable.
c. Of a compound or word group: formed of words arranged according to the normal rules of clause structure.
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1895 Archaeologia Cambrensis 5th ser. 12 290 Now the Welsh talcen seems to be a syntactic compound to be interpreted like the common place-name Tal y Bont, ‘end of the Bridge’.
1941 Jrnl. Eng. & Germanic Philol. 40 353 A syntactic compound is a later type arising from the syntactic justaposition of elements in sandhi, and often shows an inflectional ending in the initial element.
1957 R. W. Zandvoort Handbk. Eng. Gram. (new ed.) ix. ii. 307 The suffix is added to syntactic word groups..in such formations as sour-grapeism, [etc.].
1977 J. Lyons Semantics (1994) II. xiii. 535 Syntactic compounds are like completely regular derived lexemes in that their meaning and distribution can be accounted for in terms of the productive rules of the language-system; and, for that reason, they need not be listed in the lexicon.
2008 M. Fuster in M. Fuster & A. Sánchez Working with Words ii. 79 Syntactic compounds like shoemaker..are perfectly transparent and follow syntactic rules.
2. Geology. = syntaxial adj. 1. Now rare.
ΘΚΠ
the world > the earth > structure of the earth > structural features > fold or dip > [adjective] > arrangement of axis
recumbent1895
syntactic1904
plunging1905
syntaxial1931
1904 H. B. C. Sollas & W. J. Sollas tr. E. Suess Face of Earth I. ii. vii. 428 The succession of strata in the syntactic chains of the Hindu Kush.
1928 Mem. Geol. Surv. India 51 ii. i. 201 From the point of confluence, the united river flows in a meridional channel, along the syntactic zone of the Outer Himalaya.
1955 Rep. Dept. Mines W. Austral. 1953 66/1 A convex South-East arc..resolving itself into a syntactic linkage of the North-West to North-North-West (Yilgarn) and South-West to West-South-West (South Coastal) tectonic trends.
3. Crystallography. Exhibiting or characterized by syntaxy; = syntaxial adj. 2.
ΘΚΠ
the world > matter > chemistry > crystallography (general) > other reactions or processes > [adjective] > crystal growth > syntaxy > exhibiting syntaxy
syntactic1957
1957 Amer. Mineralogist 42 648 This texture could be formed either by replacement or by syntaxis. Although syntactic growth forming polycrystals of two chemically dissimilar minerals has not been previously described, this explanation fits the observed data better.
1977 Acta Crystallogr. A. 33 682 Examples of syntactic intergrowths are those between bastnaesite-röntgenite, bastnaesite-synchysite.., galeite-schairerite, etc.
2009 Jrnl. Crystal Growth 311 4784/2 In the case of silicon carbide, the syntactic coalescence is consistent with the stacking of different polytypic individuals on the (0001) plane.
Compounds
C1. Chiefly Linguistics. In combination with another adjective, with the sense ‘syntactic and ——’. Cf. syntacto- comb. form.
syntactic-grammatical adj.
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1934 G. M. Piersol & E. L. Bortz Cycl. Med. XI. 364/2 A small child who..only possesses a relatively limited vocabulary and little syntactic-grammatical practice.
2010 E. Weigand Dialogue iii. iii. 155 Declarative speech acts need a speech act verb in combination with a certain syntactic-grammatical pattern.
syntactic-morphologic adj.
ΚΠ
1970 Language 46 944 This theme of syntactic-morphologic linguistic history.
2012 S. E. Nadeau Neural Archit. Gram. iii. 61 In sentences employing complementizers,..the use of ‘to’ and ‘that’ can be viewed as a reflection of syntactic-morphologic knowledge.
syntactic-morphological adj.
ΚΠ
1966 PMLA 81 20/1 Patterns of meaning at the syntactic-morphological level.
2005 B. Wälchli Co-compounds & Nat. Coordination iv. 95 There exist a great variety of phenomena that are intermediate between words and phrases, both from a lexical and from a syntactic-morphological point of view.
syntactic-phonologic adj.
ΚΠ
1956 Language 32 82 The two words present..two different sets of correspondences, which are suggested to be complementary sets by assuming a difference in the syntactic-phonologic environment.
2004 M. Cross Children with Emotional & Behavioural Diffic. & Communication Probl. ii. 39 Subtypes of communication disorders such as syntactic-phonologic.
syntactic-phonological adj.
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1974 M. N. Nagler Spontaneity & Trad. p. xxiv The pattern, be it syntactic-phonological (for the ‘formula’) or narrative-structural (for the ‘type scene’), [etc.].
1998 Science 24 Apr. 572/3 On half of the trials they performed a syntactic-phonological classification task.
syntactic-pragmatic adj.
ΚΠ
1977 R. Lakoff in Lang. & Style Fall 230 Lexical euphemism and syntactic-pragmatic hedging devices are closely linked.
1991 T. Swan in D. Kastovsky Hist. Eng. Syntax 409 A syntactic-pragmatic shift whereby an adverb changes function.
syntactic-semantic adj.
ΚΠ
1958 Philosophy 33 75 It is not prima facie obvious that these statements reduce to the two kinds implied in a formal syntactic-semantic system.
1991 Eng. World-wide 12 318 The phonological and syntactic-semantic conditions that favour the adoption of /s/.
C2.
syntactic consequence n. Logic the relationship by which, in a particular formal logical system, a sentence can be derived from others by the inference rules of the system, without regard to the truth or interpretation of the sentences; logical consequence conceived syntactically, as in proof theory, rather than semantically, as in model theory; (also) a sentence which is derivable from others by the inference rules of a particular formal logical system; often contrasted with semantic consequence n. at semantic adj. Compounds.
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1964 Newman-Studien 6 80 (note) Strictly speaking, we are dealing with syntactic consequence in this example and not with material implication.
1967 G. Kreisel in I. Lakatos Probl. Philos. Math. I. 139 Section 2 deals with the relation between intuitive logical consequence on the one hand and so-called semantic resp. syntactic consequence on the other.
1982 Mind 91 222 A soundness proof for a deductive system L establishes that if B is a syntactic consequence of A according to the axioms and/or rules of L, then B is also a semantic consequence of A in L.
2000 Z. Pawlak et al. in L. Polkowski et al. Rough Set Methods & Applic. xii. 595 With a logic we associate therefore two basic relations: the relation of syntactic consequence denoted ⊢, and the relation of semantic consequence (entailment) denoted ⊨.
2012 D. Papineau Philos. Devices iv. xi. 151 If [in propositional logic] one sentence is a syntactic consequence of some others (that is, it is provable from them), then it must be a semantic consequence too (that is, its truth must be guaranteed by their truth).
syntactic foam n. Materials Science a strong, lightweight composite material consisting of small hollow spheres of glass, ceramic, resin, etc., dispersed in a solidified matrix of another substance.
ΘΚΠ
society > occupation and work > materials > derived or manufactured material > synthetic resins and plastics > [noun] > foam
polyether1922
polyurethane foam1939
Styrofoam1950
syntactic foam1955
1955 Rubber Age 76 717/2 Unusual lightweight plastic materials, called syntactic foams, with a cell structure like wood but easily controlled densities and strengths, have been developed by the Bakelite Company.
1970 Adv. Chem. Ser. 92 150 Syntactic foams..consist of a dispersion of small hollow glass spheres in a continuous phase or matrix.
2005 New Scientist 17 Sept. 28/2 Most of the rest of the sub will be built of a special buoyant material called syntactic foam.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2014; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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adj.1688