In the nearly two-hundred-year tradition of scientific dialect research, syntax plays only a marginal role. This is not only due to a lack of interest but also to methodological problems, as illustrated by the contributions to Low German. This work addresses the research desideratum by clarifying the research subject of dialect syntax and developing a syntactic model that not only allows for an adequate description of Low German dialects but also provides a cross-varietal syntax of the German language as a whole. This model is tested through the analysis of a corpus of three Low German dialect texts. By contrasting it with the standard language, further insights into its syntax are also gained.