Friday December 16, 2005
Syntax and good sense
SYNTAX is defined as “the grammatical structure in a sentence”, “the grammatical arrangement of words in a sentence”, “the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences”, “(rules for the) arrangement of words into phrases and phrases into sentences”, and such like.
Syntax suggests that words normally follow word-order (e.g. an adjective comes before the noun), a subject and the verb agree in number and person, a verb is placed between subject and object, etc.
However, one element seems to be missing in the definition – that syntax is the grammatical arrangement of words in a sentence to make good sense (my italics). To make my point, I give two examples.
Some years ago, I read in our newspapers about a schoolgirl who was about to be raped but was saved when the school bell rang. One headline read: ‘Schoolgirl saved from rape by school bell’.
Another horrendous example, which appeared in a news story in The Star on Nov 30, reads as follows:
PENANG: A youth was caught filming a girl bathing with his video camera in Teluk Kumbar near Bayan Lepas here.
In my mind, I can already hear the comment: “The girl one kind lah, surely camera get wet.” – Dr Lim Chin Lam, Penang
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