Editing Syntax (section)

==Topics==
The field of syntax contains a number of various topics that a syntactic theory is often designed to handle. The relation between the topics is treated differently in different theories, and some of them may not be considered to be distinct but instead to be derived from one another (i.e. word order can be seen as the result of movement rules derived from grammatical relations).

===Sequencing of subject, verb, and object===
{{Redirect|Subject and object|philosophical terms|Subject (philosophy)|and|Object (philosophy)}}
One basic description of a language's syntax is the sequence in which the [[subject (grammar)|subject]] (S), [[verb]] (V), and [[object (grammar)|object]] (O) usually appear in sentences. Over 85% of languages usually place the subject first, either in the sequence [[subject-verb-object|SVO]] or the sequence [[subject-object-verb|SOV]]. The other possible sequences are [[verb-subject-object|VSO]], [[verb-object-subject|VOS]], [[object-verb-subject|OVS]], and [[object-subject-verb|OSV]], the last three of which are rare. In most generative theories of syntax, the surface differences arise from a more complex clausal phrase structure, and each order may be compatible with multiple derivations. However, word order can also reflect the semantics or function of the ordered elements.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Word Order |encyclopedia=International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences |publisher=Elsevier |location=Amsterdam |last=Rijkhoff |first=Jan |date=2015 |editor-last=Wright |editor-first=James D. |edition=2nd |pages=644–656 |language=en |doi=10.1016/b978-0-08-097086-8.53031-1 |isbn=978-0-08-097087-5|url=https://pure.au.dk/ws/files/90431351/Word_Order_draft_May_2014.pdf}}</ref>

===Grammatical relations===
Another description of a language considers the set of possible grammatical relations in a language or in general and how they behave in relation to one another in the [[morphosyntactic alignment]] of the language. The description of grammatical relations can also reflect transitivity, [[passivization]], and head-dependent-marking or other agreement. Languages have different criteria for grammatical relations. For example, subjecthood criteria may have implications for how the subject is referred to from a relative clause or coreferential with an element in an infinite clause.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Syntactic Typology |encyclopedia=Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |last=Shibatani |first=Masayoshi |date=2021 |language=en |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.154 |isbn=978-0-19-938465-5 |doi-access=}}</ref>

===Constituency===
Constituency is the feature of being a [[constituent (linguistics)|constituent]] and how words can work together to form a constituent (or ''phrase''). Constituents are often moved as units, and the constituent can be the domain of agreement. Some languages allow discontinuous phrases in which words belonging to the same constituent are not immediately adjacent but are broken up by other constituents. Constituents may be [[recursion|recursive]], as they may consist of other constituents, potentially of the same type.