Theoretical and Experimental Syntax Lab

The overarching goal of the lab is to contribute to the development of a theory of human linguistic cognition. We investigate the architecture of the grammar, the division of labor among its components, and the syntactic principles that underlie linguistic structure and variation. Our empirical research encompasses a wide range of languages, including Semitic and Romance languages, as well as different linguistic registers and patterns of language variation and change. We investigate core areas of grammar – including argument structure, the lexicon-syntax interface, and idiomatic expressions – as well as sentence processing, particularly garden-path phenomena. Methodologically, our work combines theory and experimentation. Depending on the research question, we employ intralinguistic and crosslinguistic comparison, formal analysis, corpus investigation, and experimental methods to advance our understanding of grammar and language processing.