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.

Administrative Matters

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Online Grammars

To help you visualize the abstract syntactic structures, we will work with online grammars. These are available permanently. Here are the links to the grammars:

Online Grammar for Chapter 2: HPSG Background

OLAT

The OLAT course for Syntax 1 is at Syntax 1 on Olat.

Week 1

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Homework for Week 2

1. Work through the following sections of the Wiki.

1. Words

1.1. Major parts of speech

1.2. Minor parts of speech

1. Do the practice exercises on Parts of Speech.
2. Do the practice exercises on Predicates and Arguments.