Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING in /clientdata/apache-www/r/i/http://ift.tt/1EApsm8 on line 17 [duplicate]

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• PHP Parse/Syntax Errors; and How to solve them? 7 answers

I am receiving the following error message on my site: Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING in /clientdata/apache-www/r/i/http://ift.tt/1EApsm8 on line 17

I am not a programmer, simply a pleb attempting to teach myself something. I have searched the interwebs for some ideas on how to fix the problem and have made every change I'm game to, to see if I can fix it myself. However, when I make changes I either receive the same error or a similar one.

The site was working perfectly less than a week ago!

I guess one of my problems is that I don't understand what T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING means so I don't know what might be wrong. Although I guess there's a string that is encapsulated incorrectly - but what?

The index.php file is:

<?php
/**
* Front to the WordPress application. This file doesn't do anything, but loads
* wp-blog-header.php which does and tells WordPress to load the theme.
*
* @package WordPress
*/

/ **
* Tells WordPress to load the WordPress theme and output it.
*
* @var bool
*/
define('WP_USE_THEMES', true);

/** Loads the WordPress Environment and Template */
require('dirname( __FILE__ )./wordpress/wp-blog-header.php');(include path '.:/clientdata/php/pear-5-3:/clientdata/php/lib');