academics

language requirements

Doctoral students must satisfy two language requirements, Master's students need only one language requirement. There are four ways to fulfill the requirement (s):

1. The translation exam.
The translation exam is a timed (2 hours) test an area of linguistics in a language other than English. The student may use a hard copy dictionary. The language chosen for the translation may be any living language for which the program can find a competent grader.

2. The "scholarly requirement."
The scholarly requirement is satisfied by demonstrating competency of a scholarly project/paper in a language other than English.The paper will demonstrate a linguistic property that is commonly studied in the program. The project/paper should:

• be about a syntactic, semantic, or phonological aspect of the language;

• concern a sociolinguistic issue of the language;

• be written in connection with a computational linguistics problem;

• deal with a question concerning acquiring the language, as a first or second language;

• focus on variation within or use of the language.

The preceding list is only suggestive; a student may select an appropriate project under the guidance of any member of the doctoral faculty. The faculty member will be responsible for determining if the project satisfies the language requirement.

3. Completion of Linguistics 73100, The Structure of a Language, with a grade of B or better.

4. Native speakers of a language other than English.