why do we study syntax and what is it good for

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WHY DO WE STUDY SYNTAX AND WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? 
 
There are many reasons for studying syntax, from general humanistic or 
behavioral motivations to much more specific goals such as those in the following: 
– To help us to illustrate the patterns of English more effectively and 
clearly. 
– To enable us to analyze the structure of English sentences in a 
systematic and explicit way. 
For example, let us consider how we could use the syntactic notion of 
head, which refers to the essential element within a phrase. The following is a short 
and informal rule for English subject-verb agreement. 
 
(1) In English, the main verb agrees with the head element of the subject. 
(2) This informal rule can pinpoint what is wrong with the following two 
examples: 
a. The recent strike by pilots have cost the country a great deal of 
money from tourism and so on. 
b. The average age at which people begin to need eyeglasses vary 
considerably. 
 
Once we have structural knowledge of such sentences, it is easy to see 
that the essential element of the subject in (2a) is not pilots but strike. This is why the 
main verb should be has but not have to observe the basic agreement rule in (1). 
Meanwhile, in (2b), the head is the noun age, and thus the main verb vary needs to 
agree with this singular noun. It would not do to simply talk about ‘the noun’ in the 
subject in the examples in (2), as there is more than one. We need to be able to talk 
about the one which gives its character to the phrase, and this is the head. If the 
head is singular, so is the whole phrase, and similarly for plural. The head of the 
subject and the verb (in the incorrect form) are indicated in (3): 
 
(3) a. [The recent strike by pilots] have cost the country a great deal of 
money from tourism and so on. 
b. [The average age at which people begin to need eyeglasses] vary 
considerably. 
 
Either example can be made into a grammatical version by pluralizing the 
head noun of the subject. 
Now let us look at some slightly different cases. Can you explain why the 
following examples are unacceptable? 
 
(4) a. Despite of his limited educational opportunities, Abraham Lincoln 
became one of the greatest intellectuals in the world. 
b. A pastor was executed, notwithstanding on many applications in 
favor of him. 
 
To understand these examples, we first need to recognize that the words 
despite and notwithstanding are prepositions, and further that canonical English 
prepositions combine only with noun phrases. In (4), these prepositions combine with 
prepositional phrases again (headed by of and on respectively), violating this rule. 
A more subtle instance can be found in the following: 
 
(5) a. Visiting relatives can be boring. 
b. I saw that gas can explode. 
 
These examples each have more than one interpretation. The first one 
can mean either that the event of seeing our relatives is a boring activity, or that the 
relatives visiting us are themselves boring. The second example can either mean that 
a specific can containing gas exploded, which I saw, or it can mean that I observed 
that gas has a possibility of exploding. If one knows English syntax, that is, if one 
understands the syntactic structure of these English sentences, it is easy to identify 
these different meanings. 
Here is another example which requires certain syntactic knowledge: 
 
(6) He said that that ‘that’ that that man used was wrong. 
 
This is the kind of sentence one can play with when starting to learn 
English grammar. Can you analyze it? What are the differences among these five 
thats? Structural (or syntactic) knowledge can be used to diagnose the differences. 
Part of our study of syntax involves making clear exactly how each word is 
categorized, and how it contributes to a whole sentence. 
When it comes to understanding a rather complex sentence, knowledge of 
English syntax can be a great help. Syntactic or structural knowledge helps us to 
understand simple as well as complex English sentences in a systematic way. There 
is no difference in principle between the kinds of examples we have presented above 
and (7): 
(7) The government’s plan, which was elaborated in a document released 
by the Treasury yesterday, is the formal outcome of the Government 
commitment at the Madrid summit last year to put forward its ideas about 
integration. 
 
Apart from having more words than the examples we have introduced 
above, nothing in this example is particularly complex.