"surface structure" meaning in English

See surface structure in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: surface structures [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} surface structure (plural surface structures)
  1. (linguistics) The outward form of a sentence; the specific arrangement of words and phrases as they appear in spoken or written language. Categories (topical): Linguistics
    Sense id: en-surface_structure-en-noun-~DKjVhns Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Topics: human-sciences, linguistics, sciences

Inflected forms

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      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Coordinate term: deep structure"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The outward form of a sentence; the specific arrangement of words and phrases as they appear in spoken or written language."
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      "id": "en-surface_structure-en-noun-~DKjVhns",
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        "(linguistics) The outward form of a sentence; the specific arrangement of words and phrases as they appear in spoken or written language."
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        "sciences"
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        "(linguistics) The outward form of a sentence; the specific arrangement of words and phrases as they appear in spoken or written language."
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}

Download raw JSONL data for surface structure meaning in English (1.2kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-04-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-04-03 using wiktextract (8c1bb29 and fb63907). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.