Course Description:
Grammars and Lexicons is an introductory graduate course on linguistic data analysis and theory, focusing on methodologies that are suitable for computational implementations. The course covers major syntactic and morphological phenomena in a variety of languages. The emphasis will be on examining both the diversity of linguistic structures and the constraints on variation across languages. Students will be expected to develop and defend analyses of data, capturing linguistic generalizations and making correct predictions within and across languages. The goal is for students to become familiar with the range of phenomena that occur in human languages so that they can generalize the insights into the design of computational systems. The theoretical framework for syntactic and lexical anaylsis will be Lexical Functional Grammar. Grades will be based on problem sets and take-home exams.

If you have not taken at least one introductory course in linguistics, you should look at The Field of Linguistics -- An Overview and read an introductory linguistics text.