A Norwegian Grammar Sparrer

The first small steps in learning a new language is to master the patterns of small sentences and small constructions. The mastery grows partly from recognizing what are the admitted patterns, partly from using these patterns over and over again until they sit in your backbone. When learning a language as a 'second' language and with an available time period much shorter than for one's native language, the opportunities of such use training are normally few or non-existent. The Grammar Sparrer provides you with an environment in which you can repeat linguistic patterns of your choice over and over again, with variations and explorations in exactly the directions you want. For each expression you type in, you get a response as to whether the string belongs to an admitted pattern or not, and if not, the Sparrer tells you what you did wrong. You can then try again, and be told again. The Sparrer is found at ,

and instructions for its use at Classroom:Norwegian Grammar Checking

Each time you test or explore a pattern you will actually write the string, which is the only way of making the language your own as a written medium. With the facilities of the Grammar Sparrer, you can repeat the same or partly the same material as much as you like, and you can impose ever new variations in the patterns as you like. Even repeating the same string, the words, inflections and spellings of the string more and more become the extension of yourself that a mastered language has to be. With intensive sessions, you can both explore and drill the basic patterns of the language, and soon become ready for the more elaborate patterns of the language.

In the background of this Sparrer is a computational grammar of the language, and the sparring function is one of its possible applications. The 'advices' it gives are derived from the rules that the grammar applies in order to retract how a string conforms to the language (i.e., when it parses the string). While these rules can be viewed by themselves, on link=http://daria.idi.ntnu.no:8080/norsource/parse , explanations of the various advice messages will also be given, and therewith short descriptions of the phenomena concerned.