Prospective Students
Current Students
Structure of the Ph.D. Program
The program is structured to train students to become skilled linguists, capable of outstanding independent scientific research and teaching. Course requirements are structured to emphasize the core areas of syntax, semantics, phonetics, phonology, psycholinguistics, and language acquisition. Faculty and students are also highly engaged in research and teaching in Morphology and Optimality Theory. Very early in their graduate education, students begin pursuing original research projects, learning to evaluate different models critically. Like scientific research in any field, this is a collaborative effort in which both students and faculty participate. In the process, a great deal of learning takes place in individual interactions between a single faculty member and a student, or among the students themselves. Most course work is completed in the first three years of the program, with the fourth and fifth years devoted to dissertation research and preparation. Students must successfully write and defend two “generals” papers and a “breadth” paper before beginning dissertation work. See more on the PhD program requirements.
Advising
The Graduate Program Director (GPD) advises all first year students. By the fourth semester, each student forms a Doctoral Guidance Committee (DGC), consisting of the principal advisor for each generals paper and a third member appointed by the GPD. Each semester the DGC meets with the student to provide continuing advice and supervision in planning a course of study before embarking on dissertation research. The DGC also approves the completed generals papers.
Teaching
Since most people holding a Ph.D. in linguistics become university teachers, it is important for a graduate program to set up a framework within which teaching skills can be developed. The department therefore requires that every student acquire some teaching experience, either through faculty/student team teaching or by being responsible for teaching a section of one of our introductory courses. In addition, most seminars are structured in such a way as to provide maximum student responsibility and opportunity for classroom participation. See more on the department's teaching philosophy and teaching resources.