Syntax Quotes

• I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.

  Frantz Fanon

  Mean, Civilization, Support

  Frantz Fanon (1967). “Black Skin, White Masks”, p.17, Pluto Press

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• Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis.

  Noam Chomsky

  Goal, Principles, Analysis

  Noam Chomsky (2002). “Syntactic Structures”, p.11, Walter de Gruyter

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• The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax

  Thomas Paine

  America, Liberty, Speech

  The Rights of Man pt. 1 (1791)

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• Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

  John Steinbeck

  Republic, Lad, Has Beens

  The Atlantic magazine, November 1969.

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• Muddled syntax is the outward and audible sign of confused minds, and the misuse of grammar the result of illogical thinking.

  Quentin Crisp

  Confused, Thinking, Mind

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• The reason I am a political radical is that I work on syntax. If I worked on semantics (which in fact I do), I'd be a good Thatcherite.

  Noam Chomsky

  Political, Facts, Reason

  Source: thefifthcolumnnews.com

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• Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of the vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Vocabulary, Mind, Mastery

  Spectator 19 Nov. 1937 "The Psychology of Advertising"

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• Prose is not necessarily good because it obeys the rules of syntax, but it is fairly certain to be bad if it ignores them.

  Wilson Follett

  Certain, Prose, Ifs

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• Contrary to the foolish notion that syntax is immaterial, people optimize the way they express themselves, and so express themselves differently with different syntaxes.

  Erik Naggum

  People, Different, Way

  "S-exp vs XML, HTML, LaTeX (was: Why lisp is growing)". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. December 12, 2002.

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• To speak...means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.

  Frantz Fanon

  Mean, Civilization, Support

  Frantz Fanon (1967). “Black Skin, White Masks”, p.17, Pluto Press

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• Our memory fragments don't have any coherence until they're imagined in words. Time is a property of language, of syntax, and tense.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Memories, Coherence, Language

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• Syntax must be bad, having sin and tax in it.

  Will Rogers

  Sin, Taxes

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• There is no articulate resonance. The common problem, I suppose, is to have more to say than vocabulary and syntax can bear. That is why I am hunting in these desiccated streets. The smoke hides the sky's variety, stains consciousness, covers the holocaust with something safe and insubstantial. It protects from greater flame. It indicates fire, but obscures the source. This is not a useful city. Very little here approaches any eidolon of the beautiful.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Beautiful, Hunting, Fire

  "Dhalgren". Book by Samuel R. Delany, January, 1975.

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• If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.

  William Zinsser

  Fall, House, Nails

  William Zinsser (2012). “On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction”, p.18, Harper Collins

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• The pull between sound and syntax creates a kind of musical tension in the language that interests me.

  Marilyn Hacker

  Musical, Sound, Literature

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• The ambiguities of language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, are fascinating: how important connotation is, what is lost and what is gained in the linguistic transition.

  Marilyn Hacker

  Vocabulary, Important, Transition

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• since feelings come first, who cares about the syntax of things?

  e. e. cummings

  Feelings, Who Cares, Firsts

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• A candidate for office can have no greater advantage than muddled syntax; no greater liability than a command of language.

  Marya Mannes

  Office, Language, Politician

  Marya Mannes (1958). “More in Anger”

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• I think one reason I'm drawn to expansive syntax is that arias are so often exercises in extending language as a means of intensifying feeling.

  Garth Greenwell

  Mean, Exercise, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication[Poetry] mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensification of language via rhythm, syntax, image and metaphor. Reading it-the best of it-can create another, very different kind of perpetual present, an awareness that can be as ongoing in the soul as the stop-time of trauma.

  Sven Birkerts

  Spring, Communication, Reading

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• A letter is always better than a phone call. People write things in letters they would never say in person. They permit themselves to write down feelings and observations using emotional syntax far more intimate and powerful than speech will allow.

  Alice Steinbach

  Powerful, Writing, Emotional

  Alice Steinbach (2010). “Educating Alice”, p.37, Random House

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• Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints --the rules that run us. Language is using us to talk --we think we're using the language, but language is doing the thinking, we're its slavish agents.

  Harry Mathews

  Running, Thinking, Vocabulary

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• If you think of music as a language, the space part is where you throw out all the syntax.

  Jerry Garcia

  Thinking, Space, Language

  Source: medium.com

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• I love that moment in writing when language falls short. There is something more there. A larger body. Even by the failure of words I begin to detect its dimensions. As I work the prose, shift the verbs, look for new adjectives, a different rhythm, syntax, something new begins to come to the surface.

  Susan Griffin

  Fall, Writing, Different

  Susan Griffin (1996). “The Eros of Everyday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender and Society”, Anchor

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• I read," I say. "I study and read. I bet I've read everything you read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it." My instincts concerning syntax and mechanics are better than your own, I can tell, with all due respect. But it transcends the mechanics. I'm not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you'd let me, talk and talk.

  David Foster Wallace

  Believe, Thinking, Interesting

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