Concept
Syntax (logic)
Overview
In logic, syntax is an arrangement of well-structured entities in the formal languages or formal systems that express something. Syntax is concerned with the rules used for constructing or transforming the symbols and words of a language, as contrasted with the semantics of a language, which is concerned with its meaning.
The symbols, formulas, systems, theorems and proofs expressed in formal languages are syntactic entities whose properties may be studied without regard to any meaning they may be given, and, in fact, need not be given any.
Syntax is usually associated with the rules (or grammar) governing the composition of texts in a formal language that constitute the well-formed formulas of a formal system.
In computer science, the term syntax refers to the rules governing the composition of well-formed expressions in a programming language. As in mathematical logic, it is independent of semantics and interpretation.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
To begin with, they have, so to say, a grammar of their own, whose rules and syntax are more general than our own; if you attend carefully you will be surprised to find how exactly they follow certain analogies, very much mistaken if you like, but very regular; these forms are only objectionable because of their harshness or because they are not recognised by custom. I have just heard a child severely scolded by his…
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile
States what Syntax is; opens on Syntax.
Any such select set is called the set of postulates, or premises, from which the reasoning proceeds. The reasoning is nothing else than the exhibition of the whole pattern of general conditions involved in the pattern derived from the selected postulates.
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the modern world
States what Syntax is.
In this stage it is a resultant from previous separate association and apperception processes. Then follows in the second stage of expression in speech, an analysis of that total idea into its parts, in which these parts are always put into close relations with each other. Such relations are called by grammarians subject and predicate, noun and adjective, verb and adverb, &c. The grammatical meaning of these…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, An Introduction to Psychology Translated from the Second German Edition
States what Syntax is.
Related ideas
- Formal language
- First-order logic
- Interpretation (logic)
- Type–token distinction
- Truth value
- Idea
- Propositional logic
- Reference
- Ontology
- Symbol (formal)
- Peano axioms
- Set (mathematics)
- Semantics
- Abstraction
- Truth
- Theorem
- Nonsense
- Formal system
- Metalanguage
- Well-formed formula
- Structure (mathematical logic)
- Logical constant
- Tautology (logic)
- Logic
Place in the tradition
Part of Description logic.