Major

Linguistics Major Requirements

Requirements for the Major: 33 Credits

Prescribed Core Courses: 12 Credits

  • LING 100 (3) = Foundations of Linguistics
  • LING 402 (3) = Syntax I
  • LING 404 (3) = Phonology I
  • LING 449 (3) = Semantics I

Quantitative Requirement: 3 Credits

  • STAT 200 (4) = Elementary Statistics OR another appropriate statistics course

Social Requirement: 3 Credits (Choose One)

  • LING 448 (3) = Sociolinguistics
  • LING 405 (3) = Historical Linguistics
  • APLING 200 (3) = Language, Culture and Social Interaction (anthropological linguistics)

Non-English Linguistics Requirement: 3 Credits (Choose One)

  • LING 493 (3) = Linguistic Field Methods

OR a language-specific course from the following:

  • FR 316 (3) = French Linguistics
  • FR 417 (3) = French Phonology
  • FR 418 (3) = French Syntax
  • FR 419 (3) = French Semantics
  • GER 412 (3) = Contrastive analysis of German and English
  • GER 430 (3) = History of German
  • KOR 422 (3) = Korean Linguistics
  • LATIN 450 (3) = History of Latin
  • SPAN 314 (3) = Spanish Sounds
  • SPAN 315 (3) = Spanish and Spanish-speakers in the US
  • SPAN 316 (3) = Building words and sentences in Spanish
  • SPAN 418 (3) = The evolution of Spanish

Additional Courses: 12 Credits

You must take 6 credits in LING at the 300- or 400-level, which can include LING 448, 405, or 493 if those were not used to satisfy one of the requirements above. Additionally, you must take 6 credits of LING courses or courses from the approved list. This can also include language-specific linguistics courses from the list above that have not been used to satisfy the ‘Non-English Linguistics’ requirements. 

You may only count 3 credits total of either LING 494 or LING 496 (not both) for the major.

If you would like to petition for a course to be added to the approved related courses list, please contact the director of the Linguistics Program, Mike Putnam, and/or the Director of Undergraduate Studies, Deborah Morton.

300- and 400-Level Linguistics Courses:

  • LING 382/AFR 382= Language and Culture in Africa
    An exploration of African languages and how they are used in different aspects of cultures around the continent.  Topics may include the structure and history of African languages, traditional and modern songs, stories and poems, multilingualism, culture and education, and more.
  • LING 410 = Morphology
    This course provides a detailed exploration of word structure and morphological processes from a largely comparative method. Students are also introduced to cross-linguistic data and formal morphological models.
  • LING 414 = Phonetic Analysis
    An exploration of acoustic and auditory phonetics including understanding the properties of speech sounds and their perception by the human auditory system.  Includes learning to work with analysis software like Praat and R.
  • LING 429/PSYCH 426 (3) = Language and Thought 
    Relations between language and cognition; cognitive implications of normal and impaired language development; cognition and bilingualism.
  • LING 446 (3) = Language Acquisition
    How children learn their first language; psycholinguistic aspects of lexical, syntactic, semantic, and phonological development. How language learning works for adults learning a second or third language.  General topics in language learning and education.
  • LING 447 (3) = Bilingualism 
    Explores the social and psychological aspects of bilingualism; topics include languages in contact, transference, maintenance and loss.
  • LING 457/PSYCH 457 (3) = Psychology of Language 
    Overview of psychological research and theory on language processes, including speech perception, word recognition, meaning representation, comprehension, and language acquisition.
  • LING 494 (3) = Research Project 
    Supervised student activities on research projects identified on an individual or small-group basis.
  • LING 496 (3) = Independent Studies 
    Creative projects, including research and design, which are supervised on an individual basis and which fall outside the scope of formal courses. NOTE: Only 3 credits total of EITHER 494 OR 496 can count towards the major.
  • LING 497 (3) = Special Topics

Graduate courses at the 500 level may be taken by advanced undergraduates on the recommendation of an advisor.This course provides a detailed exploration of morphological processes from a largely comparative method. Students are also introduced to a formal model,

Approved Related Courses:

  • AFAM 422 (3) = Contemporary African American communication
  • APLING 210 (3) = Ecology of global English
  • APLING 310 (3) = Language rights, policy, and planning
  • APLING 430 (3) = Language, culture and cognition in East Asian contexts
  • APLING 482 (3) = Applied Linguistics
  • APLING 484 (3) = Functional discourse grammar
  • APLING 491 (3) = L2 acquisition
  • ASIA 200 (3) = What are Asian languages?
  • CAMS 420 (3) = Aramaic
  • CAMS 470 (3) = Languages and cultures of the ancient Near East
  • CAMS 471 (3) = Sumerian
  • CAMS 472 (3) = Akkadian (Babylonian and Assyrian)
  • CAMS 481 (3) = Middle Egyptian
  • CAMS 490 (3) = Ancient Mediterranean languages
  • CMPSC 464 (3) = Introduction to the theory of computation
  • CSD 311 (3) = Clinical Phonetics
  • CSD 331 (3) = Anatomy and physiology for speech and hearing
  • CSD 341 (3) = Acoustic principles
  • CSD 442 (3) = Disorders of phonetics
  • CSD 444 (3) = Organic disorders of speech and language
  • EDUC 467 (3) = English language structure for English as a Second Language teachers
  • ENGL 407 (3) = History of English
  • IST 230 (3) = Language, logic and discrete mathematics
  • LLED 445 (3) = Teaching English in bilingual/dialectal situations
  • PHIL 129 (3) = Philosophy of Language

QUESTIONS? PLEASE CONTACT:

Director, Linguistics Program
(814) 263-2138
Undergraduate Officer, Associate Teaching Professor of Linguistics and African Studies
(814) 865-4252