MA (Non-thesis) Coursework Requirements

Graduate School Requirements

Students must fulfill all requirements of the Graduate School for the M.A. degree, including the residence requirement and time limits, as well as the departmental requirements below.

Research skills

M.A. students must achieve one research skill. Courses taken to satisfy this requirement cannot be counted among the courses on the student's Program of Study if they are undergraduate courses.

Note: Regardless of how you satisfy the Research Skills Requirement, we strongly encourage you to take LING 6400 Quantitative Methods in Linguistics as part of your program of study. Understanding methods of data visualization and statistical analysis that are commonly used in linguistics research is important for anyone pursuing an advanced degree in linguistics.

Coursework

You are required to earn at least 36 hours of credit as outlined below. You may waive any particular course requirement if you have had an equivalent course at another university. You must take additional elective courses to replace the courses that would have satisfied any waived requirements. Students should take all required courses listed in (a)-(e) above during the first year of study, if possible.

Required courses:

(a) GRSC 7001 GradFIRST: First-Year Research and Scholarship Training Seminar (1 hour): must be a section taught by a Linguistics faculty member, unless special permission is granted to take a different version of this course

(b)  LING 8021 Phonetics & Phonology

(c)  LING 8150 Generative Syntax

(d)  One of the following courses (formal linguistic theory):

•  LING 6022 Advanced Phonetics & Phonology
•  LING 6160 Compositional Semantics
•  LING 8120 Morphology
•  LING 8160 Advanced Generative Syntax
•  LING 8170 Seminar in Syntax/Semantics
•  LING 8180 Seminar in Phonetics/Phonology

(e)  One of the following courses (language acquisition, variation, and change):

•  LING 6175 Second Language Acquisition
•  LING 6690 Historical Linguistics or LING 8680 Seminar in Historical Linguistics
•  LING 6710 Languages in Contact
•  LING 6860 Sociolinguistics

(f)  LING 8101 Linguistics Colloquium (2 hours, S/U, offered Spring semester only)

Elective Courses

7 elective graduate courses (21 hours, excluding LING7000 and LING7300). A maximum of 6 hours of LING9010 Directed Readings may be included. Relevant graduate courses that do not carry a LING prefix may be included in your program of study with approval of the Graduate Coordinator and your Major Professor.

Primary and Secondary Areas of Concentration

Your program of study must include at least three courses (9 hours) in a primary area of concentration and two courses (6 hours) in a secondary area of concentration, to be determined in consultation with your Major Professor and the Graduate Coordinator. The areas of concentration may include LING9010 Directed Readings or courses specified in (b)-(e) of the list of required courses, in addition to elective courses.

Graduate-only Requirement

The program of study must include at least 12 hours of courses open only to graduate students, excluding LING7000 Master's Research and LING7300 Master's Thesis.

Updated: 7/26/2021