SYNTAX vs SEMANTICS


In the simplest terms, the distiction can be seen on the following example. Consider string (5+4). From the semantic point of view, this string means something like "adding 5 and 4" and refers to number 9. From the syntactic point of view, it is simply a symbol ( followed by the symbol 5, symbol + etc. without any meaning involved. That is, what is interesting is shape and order, not meaning.