Requirements for the PhD in Linguistics

To supplement the information contained in this summary, consult the Graduate Student Handbook. In addition, PhD students are strongly urged to maintain a personal copy of the PhD Record of Progress and to meet annually with the graduate advisor to check that personal record against the record maintained in the student's PhD file in the Department office.

Course Requirements

The PhD requires a total of 36 hours (12 courses) at the 6000 level or above, of which 24 hours (8 courses) must be in LING. Required courses account for 15 of the total 36 credit hours. The required courses are as follows:

1. LING 6450 (Syntactic Analysis)
2. LING 7100 (Field Methods I)
3. Any two of the courses in the following list: LING 7410 (Phonological Theory), LING 7420 (Syntactic Theory), LING 7430 (Semantic Theory), LING 7570 (Diachronic Theory)
4. One course at the 6000 level or above in either sociolinguistics, diachronic linguistics or language acquisition

Additional courses both within and outside the Department are chosen in consultation with the student’s thesis advisor.

Reading Knowledge of a Research Language

All doctoral students must demonstrate the ability to read linguistic literature in a language other than English, prior to attempting the dissertation prospectus defense. The student and the advisory committee will choose the language together. The student will present the committee with a justification for the language chosen; it must be a medium for publication of pertinent linguistic literature. The committee will determine the means of satisfaction, and may in addition require mastery of another language or languages as a research skill.

Skill Requirements

All doctoral students must demonstrate a research skill appropriate to the research specialization, as determined by the student’s advisory committee. Examples of research skills are competence in a specific programming language, skills in eliciting and organizing primary linguistic data in the field and competence in statistical analysis.

Preliminary Examination

All doctoral students must pass a preliminary examination. The preliminary exam (or prelim) is meant to be a demonstration, early in the student’s career, of the student’s ability to analyze data and draw conclusions from them. The prelim exam is a focused research paper that addresses a specific question, or set of questions, through the analysis of an appropriate set of language data. A proposal for this paper must be submitted by March 31 of the student’s first year in the PhD program. The proposal should be no longer than one page, exclusive of examples and references. The finished paper must be submitted by October 1 of the student’s second year. The prelim paper should be no longer than 50 double-spaced pages, in 12-point font. The prelim paper may be based on work undertaken in completed courses. Each student must work with a faculty advisor (who can but need not be the thesis advisor) to create the prelim proposal, and the faculty advisor must approve the proposal prior to its submission. Once the prelim proposal is approved by the prelim committee, the student is not permitted to consult with anyone during the exam-writing process. Prelim papers are read and evaluated by the prelim committee and the advisor, and are assigned a grade of pass or fail. Students who fail the exam may submit another paper in the following year’s cycle. Students who fail the examination a second time are asked to withdraw from the program.

Comprehensive Examination

The University’s comprehensive examination requirement is satisfied in two steps, following satisfaction of the above requirements. In the first step, the student completes a synthesis paper that compares theoretical and methodological approaches to an issue in a way that covers one or more subareas of linguistics. In order to be considered adequate progress, the synthesis paper must be approved within three years of matriculation in the PhD program. A student must submit a proposal for the synthesis paper to the advisor before attempting to write the paper. Once the advisor approves the proposal, s/he will submit it to the other committee members for their approval. Once the proposal is approved by all committee members (with or without revisions), the student will be permitted to begin work on the paper. The synthesis paper may be attempted a total of three times, where an attempt is defined as a submission of the draft to the three-member advisory committee. If in the judgment of the three-member committee the third submission is unacceptable, the student will be asked to leave the program. All and any revisions must be submitted within 12 months of the first committee decision. In the second step, the student prepares and defends a dissertation prospectus. A student becomes a candidate for the doctoral degree after completing the second step.

Dissertation and Dissertation Defense