The Grammar as Science Project
The National Science Foundation supported Grammar As Science Project (GAS) was conducted at Stony Brook University from 1991-1995 as a joint venture by
the Department of Linguistics and the Department of Computer Science. The leading
idea of GAS is that linguistics provides a uniquely effective medium for introducing
students from a wide variety of academic backgrounds to the principles of scientific
reasoning and method. The goal of GAS is to produce a series of educational tools
for studying language in a scientific context. GAS materials include a text and an
companion software application for syntax and linguistic semantics. Syntactica is the software application designed to accompanying the text Grammar as Science. Semantica is the software application designed to accompanying the text Semantics As Science.
The GAS emphasis on developing scientific reasoning skills has strongly guided the design of software tools. Our chief goal has been to produce applications that lift some of the calculative burden from the student, but leave fundamental intellectual decisions about how to analyze a given phenomenon squarely in the hands of the user. Some resouces:
-
The Grammar As Science Project. Two-part presentation at the Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, Workshop on Linguistics and the Language Sciences: New Computer-based Methods and Materials for Undergraduate Education, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
-
1996 Grammar as a laboratory science. Presentation at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Meetings, Special Session "From Curiousity to Science Through Linguistic Inquiry" Baltimore, MD (February 10, 1996).
GAS materials were developed in the Semantics Lab in the Department of Linguistics, Stony Brook University.