Combining Research and Pedagogy in the Development of a Crosslinguistic Grammar Resource

This paper describes how a graduate course in multilingual grammar engineering has been used to inform the development of the LinGO Grammar Matrix. When the course was first taught (in 2004), the Grammar Matrix consisted only of the cross-linguistic core grammar. Over time, the lab instructions for the students in the course sparked the development of extensions to the Matrix providing ‘libraries’ of analyses of crosslinguistically variable phenomena. At the same time, the students’ course work has provided valuable feedback both in error checking of the core grammar and refinement of the libraries. Based on the experience of teaching this class for four years, I suggest that grammar engineering courses present a rich opportunity for the combination of pedagogy and research. Involving even beginning grammar engineers in on-going investigations can be rewarding for all involved.