I am slightly puzzled by this question. I quickly reviewed the Matlab syms function. And it's purpose seems to be to declare a parameter to be symbolic in a technical computing system, Matlab, which largely assumes that all parameters are numerical. Of course, this is quite the opposite in Mathematica. Perhaps however your question is asking about whether one can declare particular parameters to be, for example, real, integers, and so on. For this, read about the Assumptions option to various functions as well as the $Assumptions parameter.

If this is not addressing your question, then please give a more detailed explanation of what you want to achieve.