Syntactic Category

A syntactic category is a type of syntactic unit that theories of syntax assume. The traditional parts of speech (e.g. noun, verb, preposition, etc.) are syntactic categories, and in phrase structure grammars, the phrasal categories (e.g. noun phrase NP, verb phrase VP, preposition phrase PP, etc.) are also syntactic categories. Phrase structure grammars draw an important distinction between lexical categories and phrasal categories. Dependency grammars, in contrast, do not acknowledge phrasal categories (at least not in the traditional sense), which means they work with lexical categories alone. Many grammars also draw a distinction between lexical categories and functional categories. In this regard, the terminology is by no means consistent. The one opposition (lexical category vs. phrasal category) and the other opposition (lexical category vs. functional category) are orthogonal to each other.