2024-2025 Graduate Catalog
Department of Linguistics
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Main Office
Discovery Park, Room B201
Mailing Address:
1155 Union Circle #311068
Denton, Texas 76203-5017
940-565-4552
E-mail: ling-info@unt.edu
Web site: linguistics.unt.edu
William Salmon, Chair
Faculty
The Department of Linguistics offers an MA with a major in linguistics, as well as optional concentrations in ESL, computational linguistics, and language documentation. The Department also offers two graduate academic certificates, one in teaching English to speakers of other languages and a second in computational linguistics.
MA in linguistics
The MA with a major in linguistics offers students broad training in all core areas of the discipline. Our MA program prepares students for challenging careers in a variety of industries, including government, education, law, bioinformatics, natural language processing, and teaching English as a Second Language. Our MA program also serves as an excellent foundation for doctoral studies in linguistics and other language-related fields such as speech pathology, deaf education, audiology, computational linguistics, or the teaching of English as a second language.
The five major foci of graduate studies in linguistics are:
Teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL)
Of general interest to many of our students, but of special interest to those interested in teaching English as a second language, are courses on second language acquisition; pedagogical approaches to English grammar; methods and practicum in teaching English as a second or additional language; and English language variation and change, including varieties of English spoken worldwide. Our practicum in ESL is often available at an international venue. We also offer a graduate academic certificate in teaching English to speakers of other languages.
Language documentation, curation and conservation
The world’s languages, approximately 7,000 of them, are disappearing at an alarming rate. Each language encodes unique knowledge about the ecologies – both animals and plants – of the societies that are centered on the languages spoken. To preserve and employ this data to further our understanding of this essential part of what it means to be human, linguists and interested members of language communities work together to collect and analyze linguistic data, and to preserve it in archives for use in the future. We offer courses on scientifically sound and ethically appropriate data collection methodologies, gold standard archiving practices, and methods for data mining. All these lead to research projects on non-Indo–European languages and provide students with extraordinary opportunities to learn about new cultures and customs.
Language variation and change
Languages can vary in just about every aspect of their grammar. Compare for example American English and Australian English, which differ in accent, words used to refer to the same objects, and also in some sentence patterns. To understand language as a human system we ask how languages vary, the limits to the ways in which they may vary, and what causes them to vary. We offer courses on theoretical frameworks dealing with these questions and these data. We also offer courses on the many varieties of English in America, the structure of African-American English vernacular, the structure and history of the Englishes around the world, and on principles of language change, reconstruction and change through language contact.
Computational Linguistics
The newest focus of the UNT Linguistics Department’s graduate offerings is computational linguistics (CL). CL technologies are increasingly present in daily life, from voice-enabled smart phone assistants to predictive text input to machine translation technologies. From an academic viewpoint, CL is the scientific study of language from a computational perspective, living at the intersection of language and technology. Students develop keen skills in linguistics and linguistic analysis. This knowledge can then be applied to the design of computational systems for automating linguistic analysis. At UNT we place a particular focus on how computational methods can support the work of documenting endangered languages, linking two of our department’s strengths. We also offer a graduate academic certificate in computational linguistics.
Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics
The Department of Linguistics offers a range of courses in the syntactic structure of the world’s languages as well as in semantics and pragmatics, which are concerned with how meaning arises out of words, phrases, sentences and the uses of all of these linguistic items.
CNN lists linguistics as the second most overlooked job possibility for new graduates. A degree in linguistics makes students competitive for jobs in fields such as:
- language education
- language testing service
- teaching English as a second/foreign language
- speech and hearing– language pathology and audiology
- language documentation/fieldwork
- natural language processing
- digital data curation
- codes and code breaking
- law – forensic linguistics
- advertising
- publishing
- translation/interpretation
- marketing
Because linguistics provides students with the skills to analyze language, companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple are also eager to hire students with linguistics degrees. Read more on the Linguistic Society of America web site (www.linguisticsociety.org).
Academic advising
Advising on courses, programs and related questions is available through the college advising office, Discovery Park, Room C232; 940-565-2445; or ci-advising@unt.edu. All students should have an approved degree plan audit on file as early as possible, but not later than the beginning of the final 60 hours of courses. Calls and visits by prospective students are welcomed from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
ProgramsMaster’s DegreeGraduate Academic CertificateCoursesLinguistics
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