Linguistic structures and syntax form the cornerstone of our understanding of human language, delineating the formal rules that govern sentence formation and meaning. This area of research ...

We break down what roles different types of words and phrases play within a sentence. There are many theories of syntax and different ways to represent grammatical structures, but one of the simplest ...

Syntactic researchers in the Department ask how syntactic patterns are shaped by and shape communicative practice, focusing on construction-based grammatical explanation, the origins of grammatical ...

Rebecca Tollan, Ph.D., is an assistant professor with the Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the University of Delaware. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in linguistics from the ...

Human language is not a list of millions of sentences which people just have to pick from whenever they speak! Rather, we choose the words we need to put together to express concepts and ideas. There ...

People don’t always say what they mean or mean what they say. Imagine the problem this poses for Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant when you ask them to “play great new music.” Decoding these mysteries ...

The Greek term syntax means "arrange together." In written or spoken language, syntax refers to the grammatical rules that govern how we string words together in a ...

The Ph.D. program in linguistics was established at the University of Delaware in 1985. Its mission is to provide students with the intellectual ability to understand, create, integrate and apply ...