Language: syntax and semantics
who is the who telling who what to do?
It can be argued that there are two main uses of language: one is to inform; the other is to deceive.
Sentence validity can be reduced to two things: syntax and semantics. The term syntax refers to the grammatical structure whereas the term semantic refers to the meaning of the vocabulary symbols arranged with that structure. Grammatical (syntactically valid) does not imply sensible (semantically valid), however.
For example, the grammatical sentence “furious bear flows supremely backwards” is a grammatically ok (subject verb adverb) in English, but makes no sense.
Almost all languages, I would assume, have a collection of rules that govern how words are assembled into meaningful sentences. It is, however, important to note that while these (syntax & semantics) are useful distinctions in the study of language, language use in the real world is fluid and always changing.
Anyway, the meaning of sentences requires understanding both the meaning of individual words and the syntactic context in which the words are embedded. Words can denote a literal or core meaning and connote a halo of associative meanings.
Finally, pragmatics is the study of how language is used and how the different uses of language determine semantics and syntax.
