LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 11 : 9 September 2011
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.

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Technical Usage of English Syntax

P. Malathy, MA., Ph.D.

1. Introduction

‘Syntax’ is a Greek word, which means order or arrangement. “Syntax is the study of the way in which phrases and sentences are structured out of words” (Andrew Radford, p.1) It is the study that examines the relationship between words as component parts of a sentence sustaining their proper arrangement to exhibit the meaning intended. Every language is rich with its syntactic rules and linguists believe that those rules are descriptive in nature. They are the rules that underpin the life of the language and which are extremely slow to change. To enunciate this descriptive rule of an imperative syntax of technical English, a few exemplifications where the verbs precede the nouns, are taken for discussion.

Wear gloves before welding - Wear / gloves / before welding.
(V) (N)

Note the measurement thrice - Note / the measurement / thrice.
(V) (N)

In the above stated examples, the main verb ‘wear’ precedes the noun ‘gloves’ in the first instruction. The verb ‘note’ precedes the noun ‘measurement’ in the second example and the verb ‘connect’ precedes the noun ‘circuit’ in the third example. The precedence of an auxiliary verb before the noun contributes to the interrogative structure and the precedence of main verb before the noun accounts for the imperative structure in the English syntax. The imperative syntax is exhaustively used in technical English exclusively to give instructions.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

P. Malathy, M.A., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English
Kumaraguru College of Technology
Coimbatore- 641006
Tamilnadu, India
visitmalu@yahoo.com
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