What's the difference between diction and syntax?

Diction


Definition:

  • (n.) Choice of words for the expression of ideas; the construction, disposition, and application of words in discourse, with regard to clearness, accuracy, variety, etc.; mode of expression; language; as, the diction of Chaucer's poems.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The prose rhythm and colloquial diction here work against exaggeration, but allow for humour.
  • (2) The enigmatic patience of the sentences, the pedantic syntax, the peculiar antiquity of the diction, the strange recessed distance of the writing, in which everything seems milky and sub-aqueous, just beyond reach – all of this gives Sebald his particular flavour, so that sometimes it seems that we are reading not a particular writer but an emanation of literature.
  • (3) If you ever feel tempted to say "status quo" or "cul de sac", for instance, Orwell will sneer at you for "pretentious diction".
  • (4) Now 86, Daddy – the 11th Duke of Marlborough - has the garbled, sticky plum crumble diction of the irredeemably posh.
  • (5) He turns his ­attention to today's male movie stars and their ­penchant for mumbling (Hopkins has always prided himself on his diction).
  • (6) Discriminant analyses, using both untransformed and range-corrected data made excellent post-dictions of group membership.
  • (7) Americans don't have passports, we don't meet many foreigners, and we think proper English diction is an indicator of condescension or homosexuality.
  • (8) The diction of the original tells us that its author was, broadly speaking, a northerner.
  • (9) It's a beautifully musical film all the way through, in fact, partly an effect of Katie Johnson's delivery as Mrs W : incredible gentle diction, all sweet bleats and trilly intonation.
  • (10) Only his co-host, Loyd Grossman, had a voice and diction to, if anything, rival Frost's own.
  • (11) This section was presented by Loyd Grossman, whose diction and presenting style were even more distinctive than Frost's.
  • (12) Nor could the chosen diction of the American have been further from the socially diagnostic wit of Jane Austen or the stuffed-pudding plenitude of the young Dickens.
  • (13) In one letter (to her parents), she raved about Michael Redgrave's Hamlet saying it made Olivier's 'beautiful diction, dramatic pauses, loud music and despairing cries sound like pure unadulterated ham'.
  • (14) Diction and fractures of resin teeth were more common problems in maxillae; cheek and lip biting was a more frequent postinsertion complication in the treatment of mandibles.
  • (15) Sebald's seemingly passive prose was in fact – to borrow Marianne Moore's memorable phrase – "diction galvanised against inertia".
  • (16) With the Instagram posts showing no sign of stopping we’ve come up with a short guide to the Chechen ruler’s dramatic diction to help you understand who the “dastardly villains” are; what threat they pose to “the nation that rose from its knees”.
  • (17) But I never really responded to the antique diction and syntax - it struck me at times as even older than the original.
  • (18) Twain would have been apoplectic at the presumption: one of the letters he included in his drafts, reprinted in the autobiography's first volume, is a rebuke to an editor who dared to alter the great man's diction in his essay on Joan of Arc .
  • (19) He takes his 19th-century Gothic diction from the Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter , and a fair amount of his obsessive extremism from the Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard .
  • (20) The tennis player Annabel Croft, when meeting her genuinely homeless "buddy" David, said, with the immaculate diction of a woman regarding the drinks tray at a garden party: "I have been very nervous about who I was going to meet but I'm pleasantly surprised!"

Syntax


Definition:

  • (n.) Connected system or order; union of things; a number of things jointed together; organism.
  • (n.) That part of grammar which treats of the construction of sentences; the due arrangement of words in sentences in their necessary relations, according to established usage in any language.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This method seems the best way to evaluate the respective interactions of intonation with syntax and pragmatics.
  • (2) Therefore it would be valuable to use a representation that would allow: knowledge transfer between different systems, users, experts and 'importers' to be able to evaluate the logic, experts to easily input their knowledge and be guided how to use the syntax.
  • (3) Both of these programs utilize a logical syntax permitting easy identification and partition of a data set.
  • (4) Processing load was varied systematically while holding syntax constant in an effort to determine whether processing factors contribute to poor readers' comprehension problems, or whether poor readers are simply lacking the structural knowledge required to understand sentences containing temporal terms.
  • (5) Between the sequential motor-phoneme identification and memory systems were sites where only naming or reading were altered, including sites related exclusively by syntax.
  • (6) discrimination of language features like phonematics, syntax, semantic, and their lateralisation within ages) as far as standard-scales for all-over-accuity and lateralisation will exist.
  • (7) The retrieval efficiency was tested using STAIRS-IBM program product with the syntax operators "or", "and", "not", "with", and "adj".
  • (8) The syntax is easy to learn and may be used with a minimum of training.
  • (9) Measures administered included the Western Aphasia Battery, Test for Syntactic Complexity, and Chomsky Test of Syntax.
  • (10) A third purpose was to reexamine the claim that despite their semantic-pragmatic deficiencies, the syntax of hydrocephalic children is age appropriate.
  • (11) We present a stroke patient with impaired morphology but, unlike Broca's aphasics, relative sparing of syntax.
  • (12) Both samples of disabled readers appeared able to use syntactic information as an independent source of sentential information in reading, even the sample whose reading disability was associated with oral syntax deficits.
  • (13) Song syntax, defined as orderly temporal arrangements of acoustic units within a bird song, is a conspicuous feature of the songs of many species of passerine birds.
  • (14) After a survey of relevant descriptions in the literature the postoperative linguistic findings (lexic and morphology, syntax, relationship between idea and expressive realization) are described and compared with similar findings in the literature.
  • (15) The enigmatic patience of the sentences, the pedantic syntax, the peculiar antiquity of the diction, the strange recessed distance of the writing, in which everything seems milky and sub-aqueous, just beyond reach – all of this gives Sebald his particular flavour, so that sometimes it seems that we are reading not a particular writer but an emanation of literature.
  • (16) The current research takes the approach of asking whether the prosodic characteristics that are distinctive to motherese could play a special role in facilitating the acquisition of syntax.
  • (17) We studied "formal thought disorder" in schizophrenics, schizoaffectives, and manics by examining syntax processing and perception of meaning, using the "embedded click" and "memory for gist tasks," two paradigms that were developed by psycholinguists.
  • (18) Discretion also governs another feature of the typically Wodehousean syntax – abbreviation.
  • (19) According to the problems, different appropriate methods of dialogue were used: the simple sequential dialoque, command languages and, for more complex input, a syntax analyser.
  • (20) It covered three areas: (1) grammar, syntax, and prose style; (2) construction of scientific papers; and (3) the submissions and review process.