What Does Syntax Mean?

Syntax simply means "sentence structure." The rules of syntax are associated with the way parts of speech like the noun, adjectives, verbs, etc, are used in a phrase, clause or a sentence to sound right and make grammatical sense. For instance, "Nancy loves her cat" follows the subject-verb-object word order.  Changing the order of words in this sentence can alter the meaning of the sentence or render it meaningless. The word "syntax" was used for the first time in popular English literature in the year 1258.

Syntax is a set of rules that shows how words are managed and arranged correctly in a sentence. A book or a chapter in linguistics which talks about these rules is also known as the syntax. In the computer terminology, the syntax is often used with regards to the programming language. It pertains to the formation of statements in a programming language. It goes without saying that syntax is the backbone of linguistics and computer programming language.