Grammar
Many Syriac words, like those in other Semitic languages, are built out of triliteral roots, collations of three Syriac consonants with variable vowel sets as a "glue". For example, the root ܫܩܠ, ŠQL, has the basic meaning of taking, and so we have the following words that can be formed from this root:
- ܫܩܠ – šqal: "he took"
- ܢܫܩܘܠ – nešqōl: "he will take"
- ܫܩܠ – šāqel: "he takes, he is taking"
- ܫܩܠ – šaqqel: "he has lifted/raised"
- ܐܫܩܠ – ašqel: "he has set out"
- ܫܩܠܐ – šqālâ: "a taking, burden, recension, portion or syllable"
- ܫܩ̈ܠܐ – šeqlē: "takings, profits, taxes"
- ܫܩܠܘܬܐ – šaqlûṯā: "a beast of burden"
- ܫܘܩܠܐ – šûqālâ: "arrogance"
Read more about this topic: Syriac Language
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“Hence, a generative grammar must be a system of rules that can iterate to generate an indefinitely large number of structures. This system of rules can be analyzed into the three major components of a generative grammar: the syntactic, phonological, and semantic components.”
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“Grammar is a tricky, inconsistent thing. Being the backbone of speech and writing, it should, we think, be eminently logical, make perfect sense, like the human skeleton. But, of course, the skeleton is arbitrary, too. Why twelve pairs of ribs rather than eleven or thirteen? Why thirty-two teeth? It has something to do with evolution and functionalism—but only sometimes, not always. So there are aspects of grammar that make good, logical sense, and others that do not.”
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“The syntactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretation and a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation.”
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