Syntax 1 Wiki
Introduction
Welcome and Prospect
This course gives a systematic introduction to the scientific study of English syntax. We will ask what enables people to understand sentences they have never heard before and to decide reliably whether some string of words they hear is grammatical English or not. To this end, we will precisely define the notion ”grammar” and show that it is people’s knowledge of the grammar of English that underlies the abilities mentioned above. In the process of defining ”grammar” we will learn about a number of technical tools of modern syntactic theory: types and type hierarchies, feature structures, constraints, and syntactic schemata.
Prerequisites: The course Introduction to Linguistics.
Online Grammars
To help you visualize abstract syntactic structures, we will work with online grammars. These are available permanently and you are encouraged to study the parses of as many words and sentences as possible. Here is the link to the first grammar:
Link to the first Online Grammar
OLAT
The OLAT course for Syntax 1 (= Constrained-based Analysis) is at Syntax 1
Contributors
The core of the material in this Wiki was written by Manfred Sailer for the English Language and Linguistics Online project . Alex Berg (University of Osnabrück) gave the permission to transfer the material to Goethe University, where Gert Webelhuth adjusted it to fit the needs of the course Syntax 1. Gert Webelhuth wants to sincerely thank the following students for contributing exercises to the Wiki: Bruce Paenson.