syntacticsn.

1902 Scribner's Mag. Nov. 635/2 When his people begin to talk I shudder: for they simply open their mouths while he grinds out the same old syntactics.

1937 C. Morris Logical Positivism 4 Analysis reveals that linguistic signs sustain three types of relations (to other signs of the language, to objects that are signified, to persons by whom they are used and understood) which define three dimensions of meaning. These dimensions in turn are objects of investigation by syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics.

1941 A. Tate in Southern Rev. 6 636 The role of syntactics in the semiotic science remains somewhat obscure; it seems to consist in a number of ‘transformation rules’—that is, in formulas by which given expressions in words, numbers, or symbols can be changed into equivalent but formally different expressions.

1964 E. A. Nida Toward Sci. Translating iii. 35 While semantics deals with the relationship of symbols to referents, syntactics is concerned with the relationship of symbol to symbol.

1969 I. I. Revzin in R. Klibansky Contemp. Philos. III. 332 In this domain there has been a general shift of interest from syntactics (the first set-theoretical and generative models) to semantics (and possibly pragmatics).

1993 Jrnl. Archit. Educ. 47 91/1 Syntactics distinguishes between the relations of the physical forms of a space or building and the conceptual spaces of a structure.