DefaultAttribute NPE

[Matthew Broadhead]

i am reinvestigating some code that i previously had working and now i 
get a NPE

AttributeType attributeType = new AttributeType("mail");
StringValue stringValue = new StringValue(attributeType, "t...@test.com");
Attribute attribute = new DefaultAttribute(attributeType, stringValue);
on the third line i get a NullPointerException and stepping through the 
code inside DefaultAttribute at line 1857 isHR = 
attributeType.getSyntax().isHumanReadable(); attributeType.syntax is null.