Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 March 22

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March 22

Above sentence level grammar rules

In the same way that syntax rules describe how a sentence is built (i.e. in terms of gender/number agreement, arguments needed by each verb, and so on), are there syntax rules that apply in a "meta-sentence" kind of way? For example, you find sentences beginning with "Frist..", "Second...", "Last...", but not in other order, even if each sentence is syntactically correct. Our paragraph article could benefit from a more thorough linguistic analysis, if some linguistic area of expertise deals specifically with it.--Hofhof (talk) 13:06, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

From a very general point of view, the speech is influenced by various factors, e.g. the speaker's language, its phonology, its grammar, its vocabulary, logic (incl. mathematics), reality, the speaker's state of mind, and so on. Check: "the green wind is angrily sleeping": It's indeed a grammatical sentence, yet it's never seriously uttered (unless the speaker is kidding), because it's opposed to reality - being one of the factors that influences the way we speak. The same it true for the sentence "Second, I'm hungry; First, I'm also thirsty": it's never seriously uttered (unless the speaker is kidding), because it's opposed to pure mathematics (logic) - being another factor that influences the way one expresses oneself, because according to a very basic mathematical (logical) rule - the first element must always precede the second one - and not vice versa. HOTmag (talk) 17:03, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

HOTmag -- you may have been trying to remember Colorless green ideas sleep furiously... -- AnonMoos (talk) 01:16, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

The article Coherence (linguistics) describes the overall structure of discourse above the sentence level, although the content is a bit thin. Linguistic properties which create coherence, like the "first, second" pattern, are called Cohesion (linguistics). 164.107.80.170 (talk) 18:48, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Depending on how high "above" you want to go, rhetoric starts to play a part. Another example, similar to the one in the OP, can be found at Rule of three (writing). Matt Deres (talk) 21:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)