How Syntax Relates

Meaning could not exist on the phrasal and sentential level without syntax. Consider the following stream of words: Has there my been hours cold three is and coffee for.

This stream of words has absolutely no syntactic structure whatsoever and therefore makes no sense as a whole. Of course single words may hold some semantic value, such as coffee, which has a referential meaning, and hours , which evokes a conceptual meaning of time, etc. However, when trying to make sense of these words in relation to one another, there is none.

If syntactic structure is used to organize the words, EUREKA!! we have sense and meaning. Now consider the stream of words: My coffee has been there for three hours and is cold. WOW!! What a difference syntax makes!!!!

All of a sudden we know:

• Coffee is the subject.
• The coffee is mine.
• What the coffee has been doing.
• How long the coffee has been doing it.
• And the coffee is now cold.

We can also now semantically infer a number of things:

• The person to whom the my of the sentence refers must have been neglecting the coffee for one reason or another.
• This neglect has been going on for at least three hours.
• The neglect has caused the coffee to turn cold.
• The place where the coffee has been, there, is not a great source of heat at this time.
• etc., etc., etc.
  

  And just think... before syntax, there was NO meaning.

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