230264 How to Write a Grammar (S) (WiSe 2005/2006)

Is this sentence grammatical? - Colourless green ideas sleep furiously!
How many meanings does this sentence have? - Flying planes can be dangerous!
Do easy and eager behave in the same way? - cf. John is both easy and eager to please.

What does who refer to in the following sentence? - Who did Jill say the man told her mother Dad bought the stereo from?

These are some of the classic cases of intricacies in English grammar
which are hard to unravel intuitively, but easy to explain on a
linguistic. basis. This class differs form practical grammar classes
in introducing techniques for using linguistic theories and models in
order to derive explanations for problems in grammar. The class will
be partly theoretical, partly practical accompanied by projects by
individuals or in small groups. This will include putting together a
sample corpus on which the grammatical question(s) pursued can at
least partially be based. Above all, students will have to decide what
kind of information is the best for the project they are carrying out.

Topics to be covered include morphological and grammatical categories
and features, grammatical functions, constituent structures,
grammatical rules, and a selection of the most common grammatical
"problems".

Further information, including bibliographical materials
and a textbook recommendation, will be available from the beginning of
April on my teaching website.