syntactic category
- noun
- /sɪnˈtæktɪk ˈkætəɡəri/
- Specialized
:
categoría sintáctica
- To do this, they must identify syntactic categories (subject, verb, object), show embedded sentences at the deep structure level, and explain in their own words why the sentences are complex.
Examples
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Teachers often explain that nouns and verbs are two different syntactic categories in English.
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Students learn to classify words into syntactic categories to improve their understanding of language.
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In linguistics, understanding syntactic categories is crucial for analyzing sentence structure and grammar.
Synonyms
A group of words with the same role in a sentence, like noun or verb
A group of words that do the same job in grammar, like a noun or verb
A main group of words like nouns, verbs, and adjectives that show a word's role in a sentence
A group of words that share grammar features like tense or number
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'syntactic' means relating to sentence-formation rules and 'category' means a group, so together they denote a class defined by syntax. This adjective+noun pattern is common and cross-linguistically transparent, so a learner who knows both words can infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Syntactic category comes from the idea of grouping words by the job they do in a sentence, with syntactic meaning about sentence order and category meaning a group. Think of words on a shelf, with nouns, verbs and adjectives in different boxes, so a syntactic category is a 'class of words' that behave the same in sentences.
