This contribution is methodological in nature. Assuming that syntax stands for the study of the relations between words and between word groups, the question arises which strategies native speakers are relying on for reconstructing these relations on the basis of the utterance (syntactic interpretation). One may adopt different positions on this question. We will treat three of them: the relations are being reconstructed on the basis of 1. discrete markers (forms), 2. discrete and non discrete markers (forms and senses), 3. a subsection of these discrete and non discrete markers. The aim of this study is to make plausible that the third option has the greatest explanatory power, because it is based on a distinction between syntactic interpretation on the one hand and semantic and pragmatic interpretation on the other.