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The Major in Linguistics

All majors are required to take:

  • all the courses listed under Group A below
  • at least 6 units from Group B
  • Inclusive of the above requirements, students must take at least 30 units from Groups A through C, of which at least 18 units must be in upper-level courses (those numbered 300 or higher).

All classes applied to Group A–C requirements must be taken for a letter grade, and you must get a C− or better to apply it to your Linguistics major. If you take a course pass/fail you cannot apply it to Linguistics, even if the professor swears you would have got a C−.

Majors are also required to take at least two classes in a language or languages other than English, or demonstrate competency equivalent to the successful completion of one year of study at the college level. Exceptions can be made for students desiring to pursue more extensive coursework needed for cross-disciplinary fields such as psycholinguistics or computational linguistics.

Primary majors must complete a capstone project. This will normally be done during the senior year while taking Ling 495 (Senior Seminar), 499 (Study for Honors), or 500 (Independent Work). Students wishing to count Ling 500 for their capstone need to have their independent studies approved in advance by the director of the Linguistics Program.

Group A (Required Courses)

Group B (Other Core Courses)

Group C (Other Linguistics)

  • Ling 225D (Classics 225D) Latin & Greek in Current English
  • Ling 234 (PACS 234) Introduction to Speech and Hearing Sciences and Disorders
  • Ling 258 Methods in Linguistic Research
  • Ling 301G (Phil 301G) Symbolic Logic
  • Ling 341 Linguistic Diversity in the United States
  • Ling 3701 (Span 370) Introduction to Hispanic Linguistics
  • Ling 396 Linguistics Seminar
  • Ling 4012 (PACS 401) Anatomy and Physiology of Speech and Hearing
  • Ling 411 (Span 411) Advanced Grammar and Syntax
  • Ling 4341 (PACS 434) Normal Language Development
  • LIng 4171 (Span 417) Spanish Phonetics, Phonology, and Dialectology
  • Ling 466 Second Language Acquisition
  • Ling 467 (Span 467) Grammar and Vocabulary Acquisition 
  • Ling 495 Senior Seminar in Linguistics
  • Ling 499 Study for Honors
  • Ling 500 Independent Work in Linguistics
  • AFAS 210 The Linguistic Legacy of the African Slave Trade in Interdisciplinary Perspective
  • Anthro 3386 Language, Culture and Society
  • PACS 433 Acoustical Phonetics and Speech Perception

On a semester-by-semester basis, other courses may be included in Group C. Normally this is done only for occasional seminars and topics courses. Students requiring other courses to support a specific line of linguistics study or research may petition to have such courses counted as a Group C course. Click here to view linguistics and linguistics-related courses being offered this semester.

Miscellanea

Normally, independent study classes such as Ling 500 or Ling 499 are taken for 3 units, like the majority of other classes. You are expected to put in about 125 hours of work for a 3-unit class. Independent study should result in substantial, assessable output, typically a research paper or a poster that you present at a conference or research fair. If you sign up for 3 units but do less work, your grade will be lowered substantially. If you will be doing a smaller project, consider signing up for 2 or even 1 unit. Only in very exceptional circumstances should an independent study be more than 3 units an hour.

  • You may  count a maximum of 6 units of Ling 500 towards your major.
  • If your senior capstone consists entirely of Ling 500, it should be 3 units.

Overall, you may not take more than 6 units of independent study in any one semester, nor more than 18 units in toto across your undergraduate career; these limits include all your independent studies, not just Linguistics.