The study of language processing ranges from the investigation of the sound patterns of speech to the meaning of words and whole sentences.

* Syntax is the study of the patterns which dictate how words are combined to form sentences.

Poet Hugh Behm-Steinberg's poem " Gridding, after some sentences by Agnes Martin " discusses patterns in the natural world, makes a parallel between writing and painting, and ends with a line about the poet's admiration of Martin's work.

As with all language expressions, sentences may contain both function and content words, and contain properties distinct to natural language, such as characteristic intonation and timing patterns.

Ordinary linguistic behaviour characteristically involves innovation, formation of new sentences and patterns in accordance with rules of great abstractness and intricacy ".

The following sentences are examples for these patterns:

The second step is to analyse how these units build up larger patterns, and in particular to find general rules that govern the construction of sentences.

With respect to the phenomenon of " positive anymore ", Northeast Pennsylvania English patterns with the Midland rather than the North: sentences like " Cars are sure expensive anymore " and " It's hard to find a job anymore " are grammatical here, but not in the North.

Compare the following sentences, which have two quite different meanings, and correspondingly two clearly distinguished intonation patterns, depending on whether the commas are inserted:

Words and simple sentences are formed, often in similar patterns despite different home sign systems being developed in isolation from each other.

Adverbial second complements, however, are likely not to have dominant stress when they terminate sentences.

In the first of these sentences if by is the complement of come and Tuesday is an adjunct of time equivalent to on Tuesday, there will be strong stress on by in the spoken language ; ;

The stress placed on words within sentences is called sentence stress or prosodic stress.

Garden path sentences are less common in spoken communication because the prosodic qualities of speech ( such as the stress and the tone of voice ) often serve to resolve ambiguities in the written text.

His wife explained later that she offered Axton marijuana to relieve pain and stress following a 1995 stroke ; both were fined and given deferred sentences.

Among the most frequently quoted Biblical sentences are the Beatitudes and yet so few persons, other than scholars, really understand the true meaning of these eight blessings uttered by Jesus at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.

Syllables are genuine units, but division of words and sentences into them presents great difficulties.

Abbreviators are those who make an abridgment or abstract of a long writing or discourse by contracting the parts, i. e. the words and sentences ; an abbreviated form of writing common among the Romans.

They should not be confused with declarative sentences, which are just sets of words in languages that refer to propositions.

Declarative sentences, ontologically speaking, are thus ideas, a property of substances ( minds ), rather than a distinct ontological category.

Some of the driving research questions in studying how the brain itself processes language include: ( 1 ) To what extent is linguistic knowledge innate or learned ?, ( 2 ) Why is it more difficult for adults to acquire a second-language than it is for infants to acquire their first-language ?, and ( 3 ) How are humans able to understand novel sentences?

Linguists have found that, while humans form sentences in ways apparently governed by very complex systems, they are remarkably unaware of the rules that govern their own speech.

" These sentences are interpreted by many Buddhists ( especially in the West ) as an injunction against supporting any legal measure which might lead to the death penalty.

Context-free grammars are important in linguistics for describing the structure of sentences and words in natural language, and in computer science for describing the structure of programming languages and other formal languages.

Since the time of Pāṇini, at least, linguists have described the grammars of languages in terms of their block structure, and described how sentences are recursively built up from smaller phrases, and eventually individual words or word elements.

A context-free grammar provides a simple and mathematically precise mechanism for describing the methods by which phrases in some natural language are built from smaller blocks, capturing the " block structure " of sentences in a natural way.

Important features of natural language syntax such as agreement and reference are not part of the context-free grammar, but the basic recursive structure of sentences, the way in which clauses nest inside other clauses, and the way in which lists of adjectives and adverbs are swallowed by nouns and verbs, is described exactly.

* Cognitivism ( ethics ), the philosophical view that ethical sentences express propositions, and hence are capable of being true or false.

To my astonishment, my publisher informed me that certain words, phrases, sentences, and even passages, are at present taboo in England.

Ethical naturalism stands in opposition to ethical non-naturalism, which denies that moral terms refer to anything other than irreducible moral properties, as well as to all forms of moral anti-realism, including ethical subjectivism ( which denies that moral propositions refer to objective facts ), error theory ( which denies that any moral propositions are true ), and non-cognitivism ( which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all ).

Ethical non-naturalism stands in opposition to ethical naturalism, which claims that moral terms and properties are reducible to non-moral terms and properties, as well as to all forms of moral anti-realism, including ethical subjectivism ( which denies that moral propositions refer to objective facts ), error theory ( which denies that any moral propositions are true ), and non-cognitivism ( which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all ).

Husserl also identifies a series of " formal words " which are necessary to form sentences and have no sensible correlates.

This state also appears in S ( 3 ) and S ( 1 ), which are complete sentences.

“ What ” and “ who ” questions are problematic sentences that this treatment method attempts to improve, and they are also two interrogative particles that are strongly related to each other because they reorder arguments from the declarative counterparts.

In Gregg, the Court found, in a 7-2 ruling, that Georgia's new death penalty laws passed Eighth Amendment scrutiny: the statutes provided a bifurcated trial in which guilt and sentence were determined separately ; and, the statutes provided for " specific jury findings " followed by state supreme court review comparing each death sentence " with the sentences imposed on similarly situated defendants to ensure that the sentence of death in a particular case is not disproportionate.

Verdicts and sentences are determined by a majority vote, with the lay judges ' votes counting the same as the professional judge.

In mathematics, an open sentence ( usually an equation or equality ) is described as " open " in the sense that its truth value is meaningless until its variables are replaced with specific numbers, at which point the truth value can usually be determined ( and hence the sentences are no longer regarded as " open ").

The range of jail terms was suspended sentences to up to 6 months in jail, while fines for those arrested ranged from $ 250 to $ 3, 000, all of which were determined during these mass trials.

Support for a broad range of speech processing areas was furthered by a recent study done at University of Rochester in which American Sign Language native speakers were subject to MRIs while interpreting sentences that identified a relationship using either syntax ( relationship is determined by the word order ) or inflection ( relationship is determined by physical motion of " moving hands through space or signing on one side of the body ").

In these sentences the topic is never the subject, but is determined pragmatically.

From a logical analysis, the truth or falsity of sentences in general is determined by only two things: the logical form of the sentence and the truth or falsity of its simple sentences.

Distinctions of class or memberships of groups will be determined by the social identity each individual constructs through the way the language is spoken ( i. e. with an accent or as a dialect ) or written ( i. e. in sentences or in SMS format ), the place of residence ( see Americanisms ), the nature of any employment undertaken, the style of dress, and nonverbal behaviour ( e. g. through differentiating customs as to the extent of private space, whether and where people may touch or stare at each other, etc .).