linguistics honours thesis

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Linguistics 99

Senior Tutorial Linguistics 99 is a full course intended for the researching and writing of an honors thesis, under the supervision of a faculty member. (Recall furthermore that Honors students are expected to begin exploring possible thesis topics during Linguistics 98b , the spring semester Junior Year Tutorial.) Final responsibility for assigning the thesis advisor rests with the Director of Undergraduate Studies, although every effort is made to accommodate students’ wishes in this respect.

Thesis Guidelines

The deadline for submission of the senior thesis is 5 p.m. on the last weekday before the beginning of spring recess. Extensions are granted only under the most extreme circumstances.

The thesis should be submitted in PDF format via email to both the Director of Undergraduate Studies and the Assistant Head Tutor. No hard copy is required for submission.

Once grades have been assigned, any thesis receiving a Summa or Magna grade must be printed and given to the Assistant Head Tutor for submiss ion to the Harvard Archives. The thesis should be printed one-sided on 8½” x 11” paper that is acid-free, alkaline-buffered, and durable (available at any office supply or print/copy services store). The left margin should be set at 1.5 inches and the right, top, and bottom margins should be set at one inch. The thesis must be unbound.

The thesis should be roughly 50-70 pages. Although many students find it more difficult to produce a coherent, concise study than a longer, less carefully-edited version, the former is strongly encouraged.

Please use footnotes (rather than endnotes) if possible.

Organization

The thesis should include the following:

• Acknowledgements (optional)
• Table of Contents:  A list of the names of chapters with the appropriate page numbers.
• Abstract: A one-page synopsis of the problem addressed, providing the context of the research as well as the conclusion and possible implications.
• References: A list of reference materials utilized in the researching and writing of the thesis

For formatting, follow the Language style sheet .

Title each section and subsection (if applicable). At the beginning of each major discussion, tell the reader what the section is about. Examples that illustrate your description, as well as derivations that illustrate your analysis, are extremely useful; often a single example can be clearer than pages of difficult exposition. Number the examples. Give titles to formal rules (“Rule 51” does not provide the reader with much information when it is referred to 20 pages later), and when you give a formal rule, always give an informal prose description as well. Tables to organize results are also very useful.

Evaluation of Honors Theses

Each thesis is evaluated by three faculty readers, including the primary thesis advisor. If students have received substantial supervision or advice from scholars other than their advisors, they should inform the Head Tutor so that these scholars can be considered for inclusion on the committee of readers. Responsibility for the appointment of the committee, however, rests with the Head Tutor’s Office. Honors theses are graded by the Department on the following scale: Summa, Summa-, Magna+, Magna, Magna-, Cum+, Cum, No Credit.

General guidelines for a Summa

A Summa thesis should be both original/creative and technically superb. It is generally equivalent to or better than what one would expect from an M.A. thesis.

General guidelines for a Magna

A Magna thesis should be a solid piece of work although it may lack somewhat in originality. Magnas have sometimes been awarded because the thesis clearly reflects an enormous amount of work, even though the results may be somewhat disappointing. A Magna generally corresponds to an A/A-, while a Summa corresponds to an A+.  

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Honors theses 2024.

• Dagger Bishop '24

Nasality, nasalance, and other sociophonetic correlates of "gay-sounding" speech: Methods and empirical research

Honors Theses 2023

• Gabriel Gilbert '23 Directionals in Spoken Hawaiian: A Corpus Analysis
• Sarah Karnes '23 Automatic Parsing of Polynesian Languages: A Case Study in Cook Islands Māori
• Abigail Schaefer '23 The Low-Back Merger Vowel Shift and Other Features of Southern New Hampshire English
• George Stain '23 Bl[æ]ck [ɔ]lbany: A Sociolinguistic study of African American English in Albany, NY

Honors Theses 2022

• Akiah Watts '22 Interaction Between AAVE and Colorism in Attitudinal Judgments of African Americans
• Brandon Zhou '22 English Phonology for Cantonese L1 Learners: A Maximum Entropy Model

Honors Theses 2021

• Lucas James '21 Instruments of Communcation: Towards a Typology of Speech Surrogates
• Katie McCabe '21 'Do you know them?' Factors Affecting Speaker Production and Perception of Non-Binary They/Them

Honors Theses 2020

Honors theses 2019.

• Sarah Gupta '19  Exploring automated methods of coding rhoticity using deep learning
• Isabelle Strong '19 An acoustic sociophonetic study of dialect changes in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom: a study of Vermont's last frontier

Honors Theses 2018

• Anissa Gladney '18 Prosodic hallmarks of verbal art in Black English
• Emily Grabowski '18 Tone and voice quality in Santo Domingo Albarradas Zapotec
• Jennifer Kuo '18 A large-scale smartphone-based study of dialect variation in Taiwan Mandarin

Honors Theses 2017

• Maggie Baird '18  Variable Word-Final Vowel Deletion and Reduction in Gurmancema: A Maximum Entropy Model

Honors Theses 2016

• Anna Driscoll '16 Cold Winters, Flat A's: Linguistics, Geography, and the Northern Cities Shift in Syracuse
• Grant Schutzman '16 Tense and Aspect in Mru
• Alexandra di Suvero '16 Vietnamese Discourse Markers

Honors Theses 2015

• Alexa Dixon '15 A sociophonetic analysis of Cherokee Sound, Bahamas

Honors Theses 2014

• Abigail Bard '14 Periphery cubed: Breaking down the linguistic homogeneity of Japan, from the nation-state to the outlying island
• Gabriela Meade '14 Homonym processing in monolingual and bilingual brains: An ERP study
• Ian Stewart '14 African American English Syntax in Twitter

Honors Theses 2012

• Kenneth Baclawski '12 Deictic elements in Hyow and Kuki-Chin
• Zachary De '12 Shared experience: A sociophonetic and ethnographic study of gay-sounding speech
• Kayla Gebeck '12 Traditional subsistence practices: An interactive model for cultural education and natural language acquisition
• Elizabeth Salesky '12 A current analysis of unsupervised morphological induction models
• Natalie Schrimpf '12 An acoustic sociophonetic analysis of Middle Tennessee English dialect features across different social groups
• Anna Niedbala '12 Immersion versus instruction: Testing the acquisition of native-like language ability in college students of German

Honors Theses 2011

• John T.  M. Merrill '11 Valence-changing Extensions in Herero
• Suzanne C. Parker '11  The Neurobiology of Meditation: Cultivating Interpersonal Attunement through Mindfulness
• Stefan D. Uddenberg '11      The Influence of Emotion on Perceptual Tuning Curves

Honors Theses 2010

• Stephanie A. Gagnon '10   Distributed Representations of Contextual Processing : A Multi-Voxel Pattern Analysis
• Benjamin F.T. Jones '10 Indexical Order in the Rural Dialects of Kumamoto, Japan
• Rayna C. Levine '10       The Effects of Rhythm and Music on Phonetic Memory
• Kevin J. Miller '10 A Computational Framework for Learning to Imitate Simple Line Drawings

Honors Theses 2009

• Christina C. Castedo '09 Variation and Change in Given Names: An Onomastic Investigation of Three Connecticut Communities
• Lauren J. Hartz '09 Accusations and Truth: Reconciling Statement Analysis and Child Discourse
• Fiona J. Lundie '09 Emotional Dynamics: An FMRI Study of How the Brain Processes Cross-Modal, Dynamic Representations of Emotion

Honors Theses 2008

• Travis Green '08 Nature vs. Nurture: An Initial Computational Analysis
• Nicholas Williams '08 Directionals in Mru

Honors Theses 2007

• Rikker Dockum '04 A Survey of Thai Monolingual Lexicography

Honors Theses 2006

• Don R. Daniels '06 Proto-Sogeramic: Comparative Reconstruction in Central Madang Province, Papua New Guinea

Honors Theses 2005

• Scott Anderson '05 Stress in Hindi
• Lindsey Beck '05 The Role of Pronoun Type and Gender Role in Children's Interpretation and Recall of Written Information
• Lorraine Ferron '05 Profs, Peers and Parlance: Evaluations of AAVE- and SAE-Featured Speach in a College Setting
• Lauren N. Hoehlein '05 Is Maith an Scealai an Aimsir...: Irish Language Revitalization
• Mark R. Samco '05 Neural Correlates of Psychological Attributes Revealed Using Diffusion Tensor Imaging
• Kevin A. Smith '05 The Priming of Categories in Analogical Reasoning

Honors Theses 2004

• Jesse R. Beach '04 The Morphology of Modern Western Abenaki
• Rachael L. Degenshein '04 The Acoustics of Dholuo Interdentals: Implications for Domain-Initial Strengthening
• Elizabeth E. Gannes '04 An Assessment of the State of the Hawaiian Language after 20 Years of Revitalization Efforts
• Peter S.E. Jenks '04 The Syntax of Thai Quantifier Float: An LFG Perspective

Honors Theses 2003

• F. John Motsinger III '03 The Sound of Memory: Prefrontal Lateralization During Encoding of Verbal and Nonverbal Sound

Honors Theses 2002

• Jennifer L. Conrad '02 Structuring Oroqen Narrative: The Use of Tense-Aspect Markers
• Sarah Finck '02 The Pragmatics Implications of Cleft Constructions in Spoken French
• Steven M. Lulich '02 The Phonetics and Phonology of [v] in Contemporary Standard Russian

Honors Theses 2001

• Michael Friesner '01 The Representation of French h-aspiré From the Perspective of Loanword Phonology
• Jessica Penchos '01 The Relationship Between Language Lateralization and Visual Spatial Skills
• Murphy Stein '01 The Eye of the Swarm: Towards Arbitrary Reconfiguration in a Class of 2D Robotic Molecules
• Laura Vacca '01 Holding Their Ground? Language Preservation Efforts of the Shuar
• Elizabeth Walter '01 Visual Consciousness

Honors Theses 2000

• Amy Pogoriler '00 Transitivity and Topicality in Russian Lexical Inversion
• Amy Tindell '00 Conscious and Unconscious Cross-form Priming

Honors Theses 1999

• Cynthia Anderson '99 Possession in Evenki
• Laura Gibson '99 The Mozart Effect
• Kristin Maczko '99 A Model of Cortical Reorganization Following Frequency Discrimination Training

Honors Theses 1998

• Kirsten Henschel '98 Topic in Japanese: Subordination and the Disappearance of WA
• Jeffrey Kohn '98 Conceptual Change

Honors Theses 1996

• Justin Cooper '96 The Syntax of Coordination
• Devyani Sharma '96 Code-Switching in the Minimalist Program
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• Graduate Studies in A&S

Senior Honors Thesis Guide

This set of guidelines is presented for formatting senior honors theses for majors in the Linguistics Program in Washington University in St. Louis. The guidelines are compatible with those followed by the Office of Graduate Studies in Arts and Sciences for masters theses, but also take into account the special requirements of undergraduates. Some guidelines address formatting issues peculiar to linguistics, but most such issues are handled by referring the student to other style guidelines and handbooks, in particular the style guide of Linguistic Inquiry and the handbook of the International Phonetic Association. Even though these guidelines do not themselves constitute a thesis, they follow the formatting guidelines in order to illustrate the main points of the thesis format.

The Thesis Process

Applying to enter the program.

You may apply to the senior honors program after you get your grade reports at the end of your junior year. The application consists of a statement, approximately 250 to 500 words in length, of what you propose to do for your thesis. You also need the agreement of one faculty member to serve as your primary advisor for the thesis project.

Your statement should clearly describe the purpose of your thesis; the process by which you propose to study the topic; the type of product that will be produced; and your preparation to pursue the topic. The purpose is typically a research question: what do you hope to find out or produce that is not already readily available? The process covers such issues as whether you are basing your work on published materials or will be gathering your own information by interviewing native-language consultants, running experiments, searching corpora, or the like. It also covers your methodological theory and analytical processes: Will you, for example, be working within Optimality Theory, will you be doing statistical regression analyses? The type of product could be a dictionary, a grammar, a theoretical research paper, an experiment report, an instructional video, and so forth. Preparation should be an honest look at what sort of knowledge, training, or other resources are necessary for the project, and whether you have them or can reasonably expect to obtain them. For example, if you are planning to study a little-attested language, will you have access to sufficient materials? If you need to work with native consultants, have you already secured their permission? If you will be consulting interviews in a foreign language, do you speak that language adequately? If you need funding to travel to Australia, where will that money come from? If you will be working with human subjects, can you reasonably expect to gather all the requisite permissions in the available timeframe?

The faculty member you get to serve as your primary advisor should be a member of the core Linguistics faculty. He or she does not have to be the same person who serves as your Major advisor. Advisors do not need to be experts in your specific thesis topic. They do need to be able to take on a non-negligible amount of mentoring responsibility, as described below. One of their first tasks is to make sure that your topic is well described at the outset and has a good chance of success. You should expect your potential advisor to critique and help you refine your thesis project statement even before you submit it with your application. You should not expect your advisor to assign you a topic. It is up to you to find a primary advisor; impressing teachers with your scholarly skills and getting them intrigued with your thesis idea is part of the job of writing a thesis. 

The Linguistics Program will evaluate your application, adding its own evaluation of whether the thesis topic is of proper scope, topic, and ambition for a senior honors thesis. They will also conduct a frank appraisal of whether you are likely to do well on such a project. A minimum guideline is that at the end of your junior year both your overall GPA isand your Linguistics GPA are at least 3.65. You should also be making good progress toward fulfilling your course requirements, and have done especially well on coursework that is most relevant to your proposed thesis.

As soon as your thesis proposal is approved, you should register for 3 units of Ling 499 for the coming Fall. If your background and proposal do not qualify for a thesis, they may be sufficient for an Independent Study. Such courses are typically half as big in scope and expectation as a thesis, and there is no GPA prerequisite. A 3-unit Independent Study will typically qualify as a senior capstone experience.

Fall of Senior Year

After your thesis is approved, at least one other person will be selected to serve as your second advisor. The second advisor is usually another linguist who is available for consultation and can verify that you are writing a good thesis. Typically a second advisor will be assigned to you, in order to average out workload across the faculty, but you may also enlist one yourself. Occasionally it may be appropriate for you to recruit a member of some faculty other than Linguistics, especially if she or he brings expertise in a specific foreign language, culture, or a subject matter that is particularly relevant to your thesis. Interdisciplinary and applied work is welcome and encouraged. At the same time, bear in mind that the primary focus of a Linguistics thesis must be on the linguistics.

During the Fall, you should expect to meet with your primary advisor on a regular basis. A typical pattern is a meeting of 30 minutes to an hour once a week, but this can vary considerably. Your advisor will be available to offer advice, and you should not hesitate to ask questions; on the other hand, a good advisor will also ensure that you do your own work and show initiative. Most importantly, your advisor will make sure that you stay on track and show sufficient progress toward getting your thesis done on time.

The role of your second advisor during the Fall is generally more constrained. A typical pattern is for students to meet with their secondary advisors only a couple of times, and perhaps send them two or three emails a month to keep them in the loop about any developments. However, if your second advisor wishes to take a more active role, you should definitely take advantage of that opportunity. A bare minimum is to provide your second advisor with a snapshot of your work by the start of finals week of the Fall semester.

Although schedules vary depending on what form your thesis project takes, you should normally have by finals week a rough draft of the whole thesis, or a solid draft of half of your thesis, along with a written plan detailing your schedule for completing the thesis. Your advisors will make a frank assessment of whether you have a reasonable chance of producing a satisfactory thesis by the coming deadline (see below). It is crucial that you will have availed yourself of every opportunity of making satisfactory progress in the months leading up to that assessment. The most common mistake thesis writers make is to give priority to their other classes during the Fall, wasting four months of opportunity, then think they will make up the time during the interlude between semesters. This rarely works. In order to give yourself sufficient time, it is best if you can minimize the number of other classes during your senior year, especially in the Fall.

If your main advisor gives you a grade lower than B- in Ling 499 in the Fall, or if your GPAs drop below the minimum standards (3.65 overall and in Linguistics), you will not be permitted to continue your thesis work in the Spring. The Program Office will cancel any attempt to register for thesis credit in the Spring. More commonly, however, the agreement to discontinue thesis work is arrived at mutually, and you may be able to negotiate changing your Ling 499 registration to Ling 500, Independent Work.

Spring of Senior Year

If you continue on with your thesis, register again for 3 units of Ling 499 for Spring semester. In the Spring, you will be up against some very firm deadlines.

By February, your thesis should have advanced to the point where you are finalizing it. Most of your interactions with your advisors should consist of submitting drafts, getting feedback from them, and making the needed corrections.

By March 1, your advisors should have a candidate final draft that they agree is ready to defend. That is, everything should be written in full, readable sentences, and be substantially complete. It is permissible for the candidate final draft to have some deficiencies in style and formatting – e.g., wrong-sized margins or ugly trees – as long as it is clear that such deficiencies can reasonably be cleaned up within a few weeks. There should not be substantive deficiencies such as missing sections or bad argumentation.

If your advisors agree that the thesis is substantially ready to defend, they will ask you to schedule an oral defense: that is, find an hour when both you and your advisors can meet. Often it is helpful to reserve a meeting room for your defense, although some professors may prefer to meet in their offices. This defense should be held at least two full weeks before the end of March – or the first week after Spring Break.

At least a few days before the defense, you should give your advisor final drafts of your thesis, on paper, having corrected any remaining deficiencies. The thesis does not have to be bound yet, but otherwise it should be in the format called for in the thesis guidelines.

The oral defense lasts one hour. It begins with an oral presentation by you, lasting about ten minutes. The rest of the time, you answer questions posed by your committee. Some questions may narrowly focus on parts of your thesis, others may address its general topic more broadly.

Your committee then confers to assess your thesis, both its written form, the oral defense, and any ancillary material – for example, computer programs, poster presentations, spreadsheets, lexicons – that you may have produced. If there is sufficient time, committees will often ask you to wait outside the room while they confer. The committee should give you quick feedback on your thesis. They may decide not to approve the thesis; approve it; or approve it contingent on correcting small deficiencies by March 27.

If your thesis is approved, you should immediately send its abstract to the Office of Undergraduate Research via their Web page. You should also consider 7 presenting a poster at the local Undergraduate Research fair held in the spring (usually very early in April; see http://ur.wustl.edu ), or at other venues, but this is not mandatory.

After a successful thesis, the Linguistics Program will normally recommend to the College that you receive Latin honors. The level you receive -- cum laude, magna cum laude, or summa cum laude -- is made by the College based on your overall grade point average through the end of your senior year. If your thesis is not approved, you will not receive Latin honors, but you may receive College honors.

Format of the Thesis

General principles.

This sheet prescribes the broad outlines of how to format your thesis. It is based mostly on the Office of Graduate Studies in Arts and Sciences “Master’s Thesis Guide” 2011:3–7, with a few modifications required for our specific program.

To make this guide less redundant, it does not repeat information that can easily be found in other guides. On all points that do not conflict with this guide, the following sources should also be consulted, in descending order of priority:

• Linguistic Inquiry “Style Guide” 2010:sec. 5–70. This will be cited as LI below.
• International Phonetic Association Handbook 1999. 8
• Leipzig Glossing Rules, 2008.
• The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, 2010.
• Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 2003.

In technical matters such as the formatting of trees, you should follow the conventions and styles used in the papers you have drawn from. Avoid inventing new notations unless you have a clear reason; otherwise, your readers will find it more difficult to read your paper and may conclude that you are insufficiently familiar with the literature.

The thesis should be submitted both on paper and as a computer file.

The paper version should be on single-sided, 8.5″ by 11″ (i.e. letter-size) sheets of acid-free white paper, 20 pound or heavier. Submit two copies spiral bound and one copy unbound, in a manila envelope.

The computer version should be a PDF file capable of producing the paper version when printed.

It is acceptable to fit an exceptionally wide illustration to an 8.5″ by 11″ page by printing it landscape (rotated 90 degrees to the left).

You may also submit supplementary materials along with your thesis. Such material may include very large data sets, spreadsheets, computer source code, and the like, which may be of interest to some readers but which are not essential for an appreciation of the argument of the thesis. Ideally, we encourage supplementary material to be printed out and submitted along with the thesis, but not bound with it. However, if the supplementary material is very large indeed or unlikely to be useful in printed form, it may be submitted only as computer files.

When submitting computer files, carefully consider how easily they can be read across a variety of computers. Whenever feasible, it is best to submit files that can be read or played without costly proprietary software, although Microsoft Office 2010 is also acceptable. Text files should be in Unicode.

Margins should be at least 1 inch on all sides, except that the left margin should be 1.5 inches, to facilitate binding.

Page numbers should appear centered at the bottom of the page. The 1-inch bottom margin is below the page number; an additional half inch of space should appear above the page number. Every sheet of paper in the manuscript should be numbered except for the first, the title page. Lowercase Roman numerals are used for the preliminary pages (front matter). Since the title page is counted though not numbered, “ii” is the first page number used. Arabic numerals are used for the text and any back matter such as the Referencs. The first page of text is page 1, and pagination continues in a single sequence through the rest of the thesis.

The main font of the text should be 12-point Charis SIL 1 or Times New Roman. 2 Another font may be substituted, as long as it is no smaller and is a formal book-style font; e.g. it should have serifs. Ideally your main font will contain any IPA symbols you use, so that there is no obvious clash in style between the main text and your phonetic transcriptions. If your main font lacks symbols that you need, it is permissible to use additional fonts. Use Unicode fonts unless no alternative is available.

In charts and other figures, it is permissible to use other styles of fonts, even sans serif ones.

1 Available free from http://sil.org . Curiously, this is not the same font as SIL Charis, which should not be used.

2 Version 5.01 or later. This version, which is supplied with Vista and Windows 7, is much more complete than the version that comes with Windows XP; it includes the IPA characters.

Running Heads

Headings at the top of pages, above the text area, are not necessary. They must not be used on the title page or copyright page, and it is best not to include them on the first page of a section that has to begin on a new page (e.g. Contents, Appendix).

If you do use them, we recommend that they contain some useful information, such as the number or the name, or both, of the current section. Running heads need to go below the 1″ top margin.

The thesis must be in English. United States spelling is preferred, but you may follow international spelling standards if U.S. spelling is difficult for you.

Text Sections

Your text (the part of the thesis that begins on page 1) should be divided into sections with headings. Follow the LI guidelines, 5–6. Contrary to LI guideline 7, section headings may be formatted for extra prominence, for example by use of boldface, small caps, italics, slightly larger font, skipping a line before the heading, or a combination of these methods. We do not recommend centering the heading, or using a different font family for it.

For very small sections of only a paragraph or two, it is also permissible to use paragraph section headings. The paragraph is formatted and indented as a normal paragraph would be, but a title is put at the beginning of a paragraph, followed by a period and two spaces. Then the text of the paragraph begins on the same line. The title is cased like a sentence rather than like a title, but does 11 not have to be a full sentence. Use boldface, small caps, or italics to make the heading stand out, but use the same font family and size as the rest of the paragraph.

Paragraphing

Do not leave blank lines between paragraphs. The first line of a paragraph that immediately follows another paragraph should be indented by about 1/2″.

Do not right-justify your paragraphs. That is, the left edge of the text should be lined up, but the right edge should be left ragged. Do not break words at the end of a line.

Line Spacing

In general, text should be double spaced. But you should single-space footnotes and blocks of text that are set off from the main text with extra indentation, such as linguistic examples and long quotations. We recommend single spacing for illustrations, such as tables and their captions and notes, but double spacing is also acceptable.

In the text, footnotes appear at the bottom of the same page as the text that references the footnote. Each note should begin on its own line, indented as for a new paragraph. Each footnote should be single-spaced, but leave a blank line between each footnote. The rules for footnotes in illustrations are a little different; see the section on illustrations below.

Indented Blocks

In order to set off some information to make it more visually salient, and to show that it is not part of the text proper, it can be set as an indented block. The two main types of indented blocks are block quotations and linguistic examples. All lines of indented blocks are indented one inch, in addition to the left margin. The first line of an indented block is not indented further, even if it is the beginning of a paragraph. The lines in such a block are single-spaced.

Illustrations

Tables and figures (pictures, diagrams, etc.) are collectively called “illustrations”. (Note that linguistic representations of words or phrases are considered examples, not illustrations, even though they may be quite big, such as trees, f-structures, and OT tableaux.) Illustrations should normally be placed in the main body of the text. Place an illustration on the same page on which it is first referred to in text, or as soon as possible thereafter. Make sure all illustrations are placed in the same order in which they are mentioned. Ideally, illustrations should be placed at the top or bottom of a page, and the text floated around it. If that cannot be done elegantly, it is also acceptable to place each illustration on its own page. The lines in an illustration should be single spaced.

Notes to illustrations should be placed immediately below the illustration, not at the bottom of the page. They should be marked with lowercase letters instead of with numbers. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association 2010:chapter 5 has useful advice on making good illustrations and notes for them.

Siting Sources

A good thesis gives a solid review of the relevant linguistic literature. It also gives credit for all ideas. Both of these functions require citation and references. Citation is done by mentioning the author(s) and date of publication in the text at the place where you refer to the other person’s ideas ( LI 51–58); the References list at the end of your thesis gives fuller details about the works that were cited ( LI 59–64).

It is appropriate to cite even unpublished material, such as a class paper or something a professor or fellow student suggested to you personally. Failure to cite the source of an idea that is not common knowledge is known as plagiarism and can be a career-ender.

Copyright is a related concept: using too much of other people’s work without their permission, regardless of whether you cite it properly, may be illegal and result in a substantial fine. In practice, this mostly enters into consideration when students use somebody else’s illustrations in their thesis. If 14 you got an illustration from somewhere else, you need to either prove that it is not protected by copyright, or that you got permission from the copyright holder. If the latter, add a permissions note to the figure.

Mandatory Parts of the Manuscript

After the title page, all sections listed here begin on a new page, which has the name of the section (e.g. Abstract) centered at the top of the page. All pages after the title page should bear a sequential page number, starting with ii.

The following sections should be present in all theses, in the order given:

Mimic slavishly the format illustrated below. All lines are centered. Give some thought as to the form of your name, because you will want to maintain some consistency throughout your scholarly career. We strongly recommend you spell at least one forename in full, and give at least initials for other forenames—“Avram Noam Chomsky” or “Avram N. Chomsky”; this will minimize the possibility of your being confused some day with somebody else who uses the same name. The month should be the month your degree is to be formally conferred; usually May but occasionally December or August. There is no page number on the title page.

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Linguistics Program

This Is the Title of the Thesis, Bolded, and Title-Cased

Your Full Name

A thesis presented to the

of Washington University in

partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the

degree of Bachelor of Arts

with honors  

Saint Louis, Missouri

The abstract should be between 250 and 300 words long, and formatted as a single unindented paragraph. It should comprise a précis of your entire thesis, including the conclusions: do not be afraid of revealing the ending.

Acknowledgments

You may wish to thank here people who helped you with your thesis. Be especially careful to thank people and agencies who provided financial support for your thesis work. If you wish to include a dedication, it may constitute the last paragraph of the acknowledgments page. But you may omit this section if you have no one to acknowledge.

Table of Contents

The table of contents should give the beginning page number of every section of your thesis from the Abstract on, including itself. It is rarely necessary to have a contents section that is more than a page long; use that consideration when deciding how much detail to go into. The locations of your main sections will probably suffice; the location of each subsubsection is almost certainly too much information.

List of Illustrations

Tables and figures are collectively known as illustrations. This section gives the location of all illustrations, usually as two lists, figures first. If you have a lot of illustrations, you might want to split this into two sections each starting on their own page: List of Figures and List of Tables. If you have no illustrations at all, this page is omitted.

Abbreviations

In this section, expand any abbreviations used in the thesis. You do not have to define universally known abbreviations such as U.S. or e.g. But err on the side of inclusion: Even abbreviations that you think are bleedingly obvious, such as nom. for ‘nominative’, may not be obvious to everybody. You should also expand abbreviations you use for language names. Arrange this section in alphabetical order, by the abbreviation.

You should also define any special symbols you use. However, you do not have to define symbols of the International Phonetic Association that are used as the IPA defines them. It is often useful to make the list of symbols separate from the list of abbreviations. If there are many abbreviations and symbols, you might even want to make Symbols a separate section following the Abbreviations section.

The text proper then begins. Its first page is numbered 1, and that numbering continues through the rest of the thesis. Do not put the heading Text at the top of the page. If you have an epigraph page, that counts as part of the text, so it will be page 1.

The text will itself contain several sections, but they cannot be prescribed here: it is up to you to decide what sections are needed. However, virtually all theses will start with an introduction and end with a conclusions section. See below for style guidelines for section headings.

Center this word at the top of the page. List here all (and only) the articles, books, etc. that you cite in the thesis.

Optional Parts of the Manuscript

The following sections may be used if you find them appropriate:

Copyright page

A copyright page is pointless according to universal copyright law, but if you want one, it goes right after the title page and has this format, centered and double-spaced:

copyright by

Do not put a page number or running head on the copyright page. A copyright page is totally ignored for the purposes of pagination: the Abstract still begins on p. ii.

Appendices are for material that would be distracting in the midst of your text but is still important to an understanding of your thesis. Each appendix should begin on a new page.

Use this for lengthy notes that cannot easily be accommodated in footnotes. A Notes section is fairly unusual in senior theses.

A glossary is an alphabetical listing of all technical terms used in the thesis. A glossary is rarely required in a senior thesis, and even if you have one, it does not relieve you of the obligation of explaining unusual terms as you introduce them. On the other hand, a glossary can sometimes relieve the text of the obligation of repeatedly reminding the user of the meaning of an unusual term.

If you wish to include one or more indexes, they may be added at the very end, after the References list. But, frankly, any time you spend on an index is better spent doing something else.

Honors Thesis

An honors thesis is required of all honors students majoring in linguistics. The thesis is completed by registering for the two-semester sequence LING 3093-3052V. These courses must be taken on an A-F grade basis. The final thesis usually is 20–40 pages, although actual length may vary according to the topic. Summa cum laude theses require the approval of the thesis supervisor and two readers. Magna cum laude and cum laude theses require the approval of the thesis supervisor.

The first semester is conducted as an independent study under the supervision of a professor with expertise in the subject of the thesis, and usually consists of background reading, data gathering, and other research. The first semester should culminate in completion of an initial draft of the research. The final writing of the thesis is done in the second semester, LING 3052V, which will meet concurrently with LING 4901W. This is a seminar devoted to the writing and structure of linguistics papers, as represented by models to be examined and discussed in class. It will include peer review and commentary on successive drafts, along with discussion of the linguistic issues appropriate to the topics students are writing about in each seminar.

For further information on the honors thesis and guidance in choosing a topic and/or an advisor for the first semester's research, contact the honors advisor in linguistics, Brian Reese , prior to registering for the course.

Sample Thesis Titles

The following are some of the honors theses written by linguistics graduates in recent years:

• “Classifying” Bengali as Southeast Asian: An analysis of definiteness and quantificational approximateness in the DP
• A Minimalist analysis of Case in English gerunds
• A sociolinguistic study of Bulgarian l-vocalization
• The structure and shaping of narrative in Colloquial Malay
• Borrowed scripts, unique Identities: Writing systems of the Uighirs and Japanese
• Tongues at war: Language and politics in Yugoslavia
• Henrik Ibsen's Terje Vigen: Translation and discussion of syntactic structures
• Diglossia among university and upper secondary school students in greater Rabat, Morocco
• Portuñol: Nos nao falemos un dialeto! ( Turner Award Winner)
• Unraveling the mysteries of schwa: An optimal prosodic approach to Saami epenthesis
• Analysis of the anthropological, historical, and linguistic factors of language obsolescence, endangerment, and attrition in Mexico ( Turner Award Nominee)
• Investigation of typicality shift of dab in White Hmong Christian discourse ( Turner Award Winner)

Honors work brings great personal and intellectual rewards, including mastery of a topic, and getting to know two faculty members quite well. 

Requirements of the Honors Program

Students should be aware that the honors program requires a significant amount of time commitment throughout all three quarters of the senior year (in recognition of this, 10 units of directed reading and honors research can be devoted to writing the thesis).

Honors students take a total of 70 units. These must include:

• 60 units for the major
• 10 additional units (fulfilled in the senior year by 199. Independent Study and 198. Honors Research; see below)
• And an honors thesis based on research conducted with a principal advisor who must be a member of the  Linguistics faculty , and a secondary faculty advisor, who may, with the approval of the Undergraduate Studies Committee, be a member of another department.
• In the Fall of the senior year, honors students enroll in Linguistics 199, Independent Study, to work closely with one of the advisors on the research project.
• In Winter and Spring quarter of the senior year honor students register in Linguistics 198, Honors Research, with the principal advisor for close supervision of the honors thesis.
• Students will meet in an honors workshop (1 unit of 198, Honors Research is available) each of winter and spring quarters, to share questions and findings. This workshop will also serve as a writing and oral presentation workshop with focus on preparing for presentations in the Spring quarter Honors Colloquium.

How to Apply for Honors

Approval for honors depends on the number of courses in the major that students have taken for a letter grade by the start of the third quarter of the junior year. For students who have completed at least 28 units for a letter grade in fulfillment of major requirements, only those maintaining a grade point average of 3.3 (B+) or better in these courses are eligible for honors. Students who have taken fewer than 28 units in the major for a letter grade must receive an endorsement from both a faculty member in the Department of Linguistics who will supervise or co-supervise the honors project and a second Linguistics faculty member who can attest to the student’s qualifications for carrying out honors research.

Honors applications must be signed by the Director of Undergraduate Studies  and a thesis project advisor, and then sent to the Assistant Director of Student Services .  As part of the process, students will write a research proposal describing their honors project and have it approved by their faculty advisor.

Apply for honors work in Linguistics

Honors Thesis Submission 

The thesis must be submitted in final, acceptable form by the  dissertation/thesis submission deadline , together with the Department's  Honors Thesis Signature Form , signed by the principal advisor and second reader.  The second reader can be any faculty member in Linguistics or a related department. We ask students to follow the LSA/Language guidelines with regard to referencing and formatting.

The thesis must be submitted in hard copy to the Assistant Director of Student Services along with the Honors Thesis Signature Form , by the deadline. 

Honors Thesis Presentation

The thesis topic will be presented orally at a Department of Linguistics Honors Colloquium late in Spring quarter.  

Human Subjects

If the project involves human subjects, the student will need to participate in human subjects training and obtain approvals for conducting the research.  See the Department of Linguistics  human subjects page  and the Stanford  Human Subjects Research  page for further information.

Funding for honors research is available through the  Office of Undergraduate Advising and Research .  Requests for Summer funding are due in early April.

Senior Honors Thesis

A select number of Linguistics majors are invited to write Honors Theses in their senior year. This selection is based on cumulative GPA in the spring semester of junior year.

Students interested in writing a thesis will submit a preliminary proposal. If approved, these students will participate in an Honors Thesis Seminar , write an Honors Thesis, and present their theses in a conference format.

2021 Senior Honors Theses

Jonathan bigler-lisch, “queer” and the construction of meaning, ideology, and social categories.

Mentor: Marissa Fond

Analena DeKlotz, Ideologies of Securitization in Collegiate Arabic Instruction

Mentor: Nicholas Subtirelu

Brianna Gist, The Impacts and Perceptions of French in Francophone Africa: A Sociolinguistic Study of Morocco and Cameroon

Mentor: Natalie Schilling

MacKenzie Grimm, LGBTQ+ Identities Amongst South African Language Communities

Mentor: Cynthia Gordon

Sasha Jovanovski, Vratničći: A descriptive grammar

Mentor: Alison Biggs

Camille Kurtz, “Pero, like”: Examining discourse marker frequency, function, and linguistic presentation as a measure for L2 Spanish proficiency

Mentor: Margaret Malone

Sarah Reed, Dark Winter Nights and the Alaskan Identity in Narrative

Mentor: Anna De Fina

Olivia Stevens, L2 French Speaking Proficiency Gains During Study Abroad: A CAF Analysis

For an archive of past theses, please click  here .

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Honors and Certificate Requirements

Linguistics department honors.

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Honors Requirements

Honors Selection process

At the end of the junior year, if a student has a grade point average (GPA) of 3.75 or better in linguistics courses and at least 3.50 overall, the student is eligible to enter the Honors Program. In consultation with the undergraduate advisor, the student may approach a tenure-line linguistics faculty member to request that the faculty member serve as the Thesis Advisor. Should a second Thesis Advisor be relevant to the research topic and willing to serve, the first Thesis Advisor and the student may agree to invite a second Thesis Advisor; this second advisor need not be a tenure-line faculty member, nor even a member of the Department of Linguistics. When the student and the Thesis Advisor(s) agree to work together, they fill out an Honors Program Form and turn it in to the Linguistics Office, where it will be placed in the student’s file. At this point, the student has entered the Honors Program.

Senior thesis

Students must write an original honors thesis under the guidance of a Thesis Advisor from the linguistics faculty, chosen in consultation with the undergraduate advisor. The thesis must be a substantial piece of work; it may be a revised and expanded version of a term paper. The Thesis Advisor determines whether the thesis is acceptable and may require the student to register for up to 6 credits in Honors Thesis (LING 403), taken pass/no pass (P/N).

Upon fulfilling these requirements, the candidate is approved to receive a B.A. degree with honors in Linguistics.

Honors Program Procedures

Apply for Honors Program

Department Senior Theses

Shelby Arnson , Twentieth Century Sound Change in Washington DC African American English , advisor: Tyler Kendall.

Brittany Parham , Diagnosing Stress: The Acoustic Correlates of Stress in Warm Springs Iciskin,  co-advisors: Spike Gildea, Melissa Baese-Berk, and Joana Jansen, NILI.

Drew McLaughlin, Individual Variation in the Perception of Variable and Degraded Speech , advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk.

Anna Robinson , Linguistic and Musical Integration: Effect of Melodic Accent on Rhythm Perception , advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk.

Cyndie Davenport , Dialect Variation in English, and Investigation into the Disappearing Word Effect , advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk.

Jordan A. G. Douglas ,  Creating Cariban Postpositions: A Sometimes Bipartite Lexical Class, advsior: Spike Gildea.

Zachary Houghton , A Cross-linguistic Study of Word Order in Binomial Expressions in English, Korean, and Japanese , advisor: Volya Kapatsinski.

Chasen Afghani, The Role of Financial Rewards in Non-Native Speech Adaptation , advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk.

Carissa Diantoro , Investigating the effect of 2nd language learning on the acquisition of a 3rd language rhythm pattern , advisor: Lisa Redford.

Kayla Walker , The Role of Semantic Predictability in Adaptation to Nonnative-Accented Speech , advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk.

Isabel Crabtree, Nationalism and “foreign” speech: The role of listener ideology in perception of non-native speech volume, advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk.

Sabrina Piccolo , Effect of Accent Perception on the Perception of Professionalism, advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk.

Kira Seretan , Split diminutives: A study of truncation patterns in American English speakers with varying linguistic backgrounds , advisor: Volya Kapatsinski.

Honors College Theses

Hayden Igartua , Linguistic Feature Spread in Online Social Networks , co-advisors: Spike Gildea and Charlotte Vaughn.

Jordan A. G. Douglas , A Formal and Semantic Reconstruction of Cariban Postpositions , co-advisors: Spike Gildea and Don Daniels.

Kayla Walker, The Role of Semantic Predictability in Adaptation to Nonnative-Accented Speech , advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk**Kayla was awarded the Applied Research Award by Clark Honors College.**

Isabel Crabtree, Nationalism and “foreign” speech: The role of listener ideology in perception of non-native speech volume, advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk**Isabel was awarded the Barbara Corrado Pope Award by Clark Honors College.**

Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Certificate (SLAT)

Interested in languages? Thought about becoming a language teacher? There are over 6,500 languages spoken in the world today, and most people live and work with speakers of more than one language. There is tremendous pressure/desire to learn national and international languages, both in the US and around the world. To have the SLAT certificate added to your Degree Guide, please contact the SLAT advisor . When your SLAT requirements are complete, you will apply for the SLAT at the same time you apply to graduate.

The Certificate in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching is available to both undergraduate and graduate students. It is a great way to begin your training in the following areas:

• Second language acquisition and teaching
• U.S. elementary, middle and secondary jobs
• Immersion schools
• Teaching more than one language
• Teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language
• Translation
• International business
• Area studies and linguistics
• Language planning and policy
• Multi-cultural and multi-lingual awareness
• Immigration issues
• Language diversity
• U.S. residency and citizenship requirements

Learn more about SLAT

SLAT requirements

Honors Program

The department's honors program affords students the opportunity to learn how to put together a major research paper. It is necessary to have a minimum grade point average of 3.5 , both overall and in the upper-division requirements for the major, to apply for admission to the honors program.

The program consists of enrolling in 2-4 units in the Linguistics Honors (H195) course for 2 continuous semesters , normally in the student's final year. Under the direction of a faculty member , students carry out research and submit a thesis critically summarizing the material that has been covered. The deadline for submitting theses is the Monday of the 13th week of classes of the semester in which the thesis is submitted. Students who finish in the Spring semester will have an opportunity to present their research at a department colloquium at the end of the semester.

Petition to Enroll in the Honors Thesis Course :  Ling H195A / Ling H195B

Archive of linguistics undergraduate honors theses.

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Honours Research Thesis (LING6090)

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#16 Linguistics major incl. (LING2010 or 2040 or 2045) + (LING2000 or 2030) & GPA of at least 5 in #8 advanced LING courses.

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This is a year long course. It commences in Semester 1, 2017 and completes in Semester 2, 2017.

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Study of research methods in linguistics & a supervised research essay exploring a significant issue in the area of Linguistics. Students commencing in sem 1 enrol in LING6090; students commencing in sem 2 enrol in LING6091.

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Completing the undergraduate honors thesis

The Honors Thesis Project is structured over two semesters. The student enrolls in L399 in the first semester and in L499 in the second semester. By the end of the first semester, at the latest, the honors thesis writer and the advisor should agree on an outline of the project, including the details of what will be accomplished in the 1st and 2nd semesters, including specific dates and deadlines.

The student and advisor agree on the specific topic of study, including the methodology to be used to collect or find the data, and the theoretical model to be used to analyze the data. In the first semester, the student works on, and ideally completes, the presentation of the model, the review of the literature of the chosen topic (in conjunction with the advisor), and the methodology chapter in which the methods are described for collecting or finding data. This is particularly relevant for quantitative studies. If the thesis is a qualitative study, then a long methodology chapter might not be necessary. If the Honors Thesis has a quantitative part, by the end of the first semester the student should have collected or gathered all the data to be used for the study, and coding and/or analysis should have started, as well.

In the second semester, the student finishes up the remainder of the coding and analysis, by mid-February at the latest (for the spring semester) or the beginning of October (for fall semester). The student then pulls the whole thesis together, including an introduction and a conclusion. The entire document should be complete and ready to give to reader(s) by the end of the mid-semester break.

The student must have at least one reader in addition to the advisor, and more than one reader if desired. The reader(s) receive the completed document after the mid-semester break. From this point on, there are two major options for the completion of the honors thesis.

By around the 10th of November/April, the reader(s) and advisor give the student their comments and the student incorporates them into the final version, which must be revised and approved by the advisor, at the very latest, by the end of November/April.

By around the 10th of November/April, the reader(s), the advisor and the student have an oral defense, in which there is a discussion about the thesis. After this meeting, the reader(s) and advisor give the student their feedback, if they have not already done so in the oral defense. The student incorporate this advice into the final version, which must be completed and approved by the advisor, by the end of November/April at the latest.

Upon successful completion of the honors thesis, the student is awarded an honors cord, ideally before graduation so that it can be worn during graduation.

The Linguistics academic advisor must be notified by the advisor of the successful completion of the honors thesis. This enables them to assist with required paperwork. Alternatively, the advisor can inform the Director of Undergraduate Studies and s/he will notify the Linguistics academic advisor.

If there are any questions regarding the procedure, please feel free to contact the Director of Undergraduate Studies .

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Our graduate students are actively engaged in ground-breaking research as part of their programs.

Discover successfully defended theses and dissertations from our alumni.

2024 Alumni

Adebara, Ifeoluwanimi (PhD) Towards Afrocentric natural language processing 

Lloy, Line (MA) Humans with human voices: gender presentation in a gender diverse corpus

Shamei, Arian (PhD) Speech postures are postures : towards a unified approach to postural control in gross and fine motor skills

2023 Alumni

Angsongna, Alexander (PhD) Aspects of the morphophonology of Dagaare

Huijsmans, Marianne (PhD) Second-position clitics, from morphosyntax to semantics : the ʔayʔaǰuθəm (Comox-Sliammon) perspective

Oliveira Salles, Raiane (PhD) Functional categorization parameters : argumenthood with functional heads other than D in Carioca Brazilian Portuguese and Pirahã

Soo, Rachel (PhD) Perception, recognition, and encoding of Cantonese sound change variants

2022 Alumni

Tkachman, Oksana (PhD) Embodiment and emergent phonology in the visual-manual modality : factors enabling sublexical componentiality

Lo, Roger (Yu-Hsiang) (PhD) Post-stop fundamental frequency perturbation in production and perception of Mandarin stop voicing  

Anghelescu, Andrei (PhD) Prosodic phonology in Nata

2021 Alumni

Guntly, Erin Alisa (PhD) ‘Yeah, I doubt it.’ ‘No, it’s true.’ How paradoxical responses impact the common ground

Akinbo, Samuel Kayode (PhD) Vowel harmony and some related processes in Fungwa

Aonuki, Yurika (MA) Relative pronominal tense: Evidence from Gitksan, Japanese, and English

Bosurgi, Alexandra (MA) Reexamining gender stereotype effects in speech processing : a replication of Strand (2000)

Johnson, Khia Anne (PhD) Crosslinguistic similarity and structured variation in Cantonese-English bilingual speech production

2020 Alumni

Osa Gómez del Campo, Adriana (PhD) Epistemic (mis)alignment in discourse : what Spanish discourse markers reveal

Fry, Michael David (PhD) Grammaticus ex machina: Tone inventories as hypothesized by machine

Keupdjio, Hermann Sidoine (PhD) The syntax of A′-dependencies in Bamileke Medumba

Amoako, Wendy Kwakye (MA) Assessing phonological development among Akan-speaking children

Weber, Natalie (PhD) Syntax, prosody, and metrical structure in Blackfoot

2019 Alumni

Crippen, James A. (PhD) The syntax in Tlingit verbs

Gambarage, Joash Johannes (PhD) Belief-of-existence determiners: Evidence from the syntax and semantics of Nata augments

Heim, Johannes M. (PhD) Commitment and engagement: The role of intonation in deriving speech acts

Keough, Megan (PhD) The role of prior experience in the integration of aerotactile speech information

Ozburn, Avery (PhD) A target-oriented approach to neutrality in vowel harmony

Yuan, Yifang (MA) Response markers in Mandarin Chinese conversation: A corpus-based case study of shi, dui, xing, hao and the variants of shi

2018 Alumni

Black, Alexis K. (PhD) How perception constrains statistical learning across development

Chen, Sihwei (PhD) Finding semantic building blocks: Temporal and modal interpretation in Atayal

Lam, Wai Man (PhD) Perception of lexical tones by homeland and heritage speakers of Cantonese

de Oliveira Andreotti, Bruno Luis (MA) Interpreting derived stative predicates: Evidence from ʔayʔaǰuθəm

2017 Alumni

Burge, Heather (MA) Prospective aspect in Tlingit

Mackie, James Scott (PhD) Simulating the evolution of consonant inventories

McClay, Elise Kedersha (MA) Focus in Ktunaxa: Word order and prosody

Stelle, Elizabeth Leigh (PhD) Visual feedback during speech production

Thoma, Sonja Christine (PhD) Discourse particles and the syntax of discourse: Evidence from Miesbach Bavarian

2016 Alumni

Allen, Blake H. (PhD) Bayesian models of learning and generating inflectional morphology

Fund-Reznicek, Ella (MA) Communication and coordination between singers performing duets

Glougie, Jennifer Robin Sarah (PhD) The semantic and pragmatics of English evidential expressions: The expression of evidentiality in police interviews

Littell, Patrick William (PhD) Focus, predication, and polarity in Kwak’wala

McMullin, Kevin James (PhD) Tier-based locality in long-distance phonotactics: learnability and typology

Moewaki, Ayako (MA) Quantifiers in Kwak’wala

Noguchi, Masaki (PhD) Acquisition of allophony from speech input by adult learners

2015 Alumni

Abel, Jennifer Colleen (PhD) The effect of task difficulty on speech convergence

Bicevskis, Katie (MA)

Visual-tactile integration and individual differences in speech perception

Božič, Jurij (MA)

Spell-out of phonological domains: the case of Slovenian

Chiu, Cheng-hao (PhD)

Startling auditory stimulus as a window into speech motor planning

Gutiérrez, Analía (PhD)

Segmental and prosodic complexity in Nivaĉle: laryngeals, laterals, and metathesis

Liu, Tianhan (MA)

Modal concord in Mandarin

Louie, Meagan (PhD)

The temporal semantics of actions and circumstance in Blackfoot

McAuliffe, Michael (PhD)

Attention and salience in lexically-guided perceptual learning

Toews, Carmela Irene Penner (PhD)

Topics in Siamou tense and aspect

2014 Alumni

D’Aquisto, Joseph Paul (MA)

Visual discrimination of French and English in inter-speech and speech-ready position

Dunham, Joel Robert William (PhD)

The online linguistic database : software for linguistic fieldwork

Fuhrman, Robert (MA)

Vocal effort and within-speaker coordination in speech production : effects on postural control

Sherer, Laura (MA)

Nominalization and voice in Kwak’wala

Vincent, Audra (MA)

Coeur d’Alene Aspect

2013 Alumni

Bliss, Heather (PhD)

The Blackfoot configurationality conspiracy: parallels and differences in clausal and nominal structures

Greene, Hannah (MA)

Verb classes in Kwaḱwala

Lyon, John (PhD)

Predication and equation in Okanagan Salish: the syntax and semantics of determiner phrases

Menzies, Stacey (MA)

Nsyilxcen modality: semantic analysis of epistemic modality

Schellenberg, Murray Henry (PhD)

The realization of tone in singing in Cantonese and Mandarin

Yamane, Noriko (PhD)

‘Placeless’ consonants in Japanese: an ultrasound investigation

2012 Alumni

Scott, Mark (PhD)

Speech imagery as corollary discharge

Szakay, Anita (PhD)

The effect of dialect on bilingual lexical processing and representation

Thompson, James J. (PhD)

Syntactic nominalization in Halkomelem Salish

Waldie, Ryan James (PhD)

Evidentiality in Nuu-chah-nulth

2011 Alumni

Arkoh, Ruby Becky (MA)

Semantics of Akan bi and nʊ

Armoskaite, Solveiga (PhD)

The Destiny of Roots in Blackfoot and Lithuanian

Christodoulou, Christiana (PhD)

Cypriot Greek Down syndrome: their grammar and its interfaces

Derrick, Donald (PhD)

Kinematic patterning of flaps, taps and rhotics in English

Fujimori, Atsushi (PhD)

The correspondence between vowel quality and verbal telicity in Yamato-Japanese

Jacobs, Peter (PhD)

Control in Skwxwu7mesh

Jóhannsdóttir, Kristín M. (PhD)

Aspects of the progressive in English and Icelandic

Sterian, Laura Andreea (MA)

The syntax and semantics of gap and resumptive strategies in Iraqi Arabic D-linked content questions

2010 Alumni

Chávez-Peón, Mario (PhD)

The interaction of metrical structure, tone, and phonation types in Quiaviní Zapotec

Hudu, Fusheini (PhD)

Dagbani tongue-root harmony: a formal account with ultrasound investigation

Mudzingwa, Calisto (PhD)

Shona morphophonemics: repair strategies in Karanga and Zezuru

Peterson, Tyler (PhD)

Epistemic modality and evidentiality in Gitksan at the semantics-pragmatics interface

2009 Alumni

Caldecott, Marion (PhD)

Non-exhaustive parsing: phonetic and phonological evidence from St’át’imcets

Ferch, Elizabeth (MA)

Number and the scope of indefinites

2008 Alumni

Brown, Jason (PhD)

Theoretical aspects of Gitksan phonology

Cook, Clare (PhD)

The syntax and semantics of clause-typing in Plains Cree

Kiyota, Masaru (PhD)

Situation aspect and viewpoint aspect: from Salish to Japanese

Koch, Karsten (PhD)

Intonation and Focus in Nɬeʔkepmxcin (Thompson River Salish)

Mühlbauer, Jeffrey (PhD)

kâ-yôskâtahk ôma nêhiyawêwin: the representation of intentionality in Plains Cree

Steriopolo, Olga (PhD)

Form and function of expressive morphology: a case study of Russian

2007 Alumni

Barczak, Leszek (MA)

Towards an analysis of Yorùbá conditionals: its implications for the phrase structure

2006 Alumni

Ajíbóyè, Ọládiípọ̀ (PhD)

Topics on Yorùbá nominal expressions

Bar-el, Leora (PhD)

Aspectual distinctions in Sk̲wx̲wú7mesh

Gillon, Carrie (PhD)

The semantics of determiners domain restriction in Sk̲wx̲wú7mesh

Namdaran, Nahal (MA)

Retraction in St’át’imcets: an ultrasonic investigation

Picanço, Gessiane L. (PhD)

Mundurukú phonetics, phonology, synchrony, diachrony

Wilson, Ian (PhD)

Articulatory settings of French and English monolingual and bilingual speakers

2005 Alumni

Campbell, Fiona (MA)

The gestural organization of North American English /r/: a study of timing and magnitude

Oh, Sunyoung (PhD)

Articulatory characteristics of English /l/ in speech development

Perkins, Jeremy (MA)

The RTR harmonic domain in two dialects of Yorùbá

Quis, Dominique (MA)

The voice of a forgotten people: on the reconstructed etymology of the Beothuk (Shawthrut) self-designation sakanak ‘red indian people’

Ravinski, Christine (MA)

Grammatical possession in Nuu-chah-nulth

Ruangjaroon, Sugunya (PhD)

The syntax of WH-expressions as variables in Thai

Wojdak, Rachel (PhD)

The linearization of affixes: evidence from Nuu-chah-nulth

2004 Alumni

Jones, Susan (MA)

Progressive aspect and distributively quantified objects: a semantic/pragmatic account

McDowell, Ramona E. (MA)

Retraction in Montana Salish lateral consonants

Shank, Scott (PhD)

Domain widening

Shiobara, Kayono (PhD)

Linearization: a derivational approach to the syntax-prosody interface

2003 Alumni

Gessner, Suzanne (PhD)

The prosodic system of the Dakelh (Carrier) language

Gormley, Andrea (MA)

The production of consonant harmony in child speech

Kalmar, Michele (MA)

Patterns of reduplication in Kwak’wala

Kim, Eun-Sook (PhD)

Theoretical issues in Nuu-Chah-Nulth phonology and morphology

2002 Alumni

Baptiste, Maxine R. (MA)

Okanagan wh-questions

Kim, Soomee (MA)

Aspirates in Korean: perspectives on coalescence, CK, and gemination

2001 Alumni

Blake, Susan J. (PhD)

On the distribution and representation of schwa in Sliammon (Salish): descriptive and theoretical perspectives

Glougie, Jennifer (MA)

Topics in the syntax and semantics of Blackfoot quantifiers and nominals

Hirose, Tomio (PhD)

Origins of predicates evidence from Plains Cree

Howe, Darin M. (PhD)

Oowekyala segmental phonology

Rosen, Eric (PhD)

Phonological processes interacting with the lexicon: variable and non-regular effects in Japanese phonology

2000 Alumni

Kaneko, Ikuyo (MA)

A metrical analysis of Blackfoot nominal accent in optimality theory

Strauss, Uri (MA)

Phrase structure and verb movement in Hebrew and English imperatives

1999 Alumni

Bob, Tanya (MA)

Laryngeal phenomena in Tahltan

Caldecott, Marion (MA)

A comparison of glottalized resonants in Sənčaθən and St’át’imcets

Gessner, Suzanne (MA)

Laryngeal processes in Chipewyan and other Athapaskan languages

Nakamura, Yumiko (MA)

The syntax of possessor raising

1998 Alumni

Bar-El, Leora (MA)

Verbal plurality and adverbial quantification a case study of Sk̲wx̲ú7mesh (Squamish Salish)

Horseherder, Nicole (MA)

Binding-theoretic analysis of Navajo possessor YI-

Lai, I-Ju Sandra (MA)

The grammar and acquisition of Secwepemctsín independent pronouns

Suzuki, Takeru (PhD)

A theory of lexical functors light heads in the lexicon and the syntax

Uechi, Akihiko (PhD)

An interface approach to topic/focus structure

1997 Alumni

Blain, Eleanor M. (PhD)

Wh-constructions in Nêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree)

Chang, Lisa (MA)

Wh-in-situ phenomena in French

Currie, Elizabeth J. (MA)

Topic time: the syntax and semantics of SqwXwu7mish temporal adverbials

Leitch, Myles F. (PhD)

Vowel harmonies of the Congo Basin: an optimality theory analysis of variation in the Bantu zone C

Li, J. Cora R. (MA)

Bei and the passive in Cantonese

Sanchez, Monica (PhD)

Syntactic features in agrammatic production

Shahin, Kimary (PhD)

Postvelar harmony an examination of its bases and crosslinguistic variation

Turkel, William J. (MA)

On triggered learning

1996 Alumni

Jiang-King, Ping (PhD)

An optimality account of tone-vowel interaction in Northern Min

Matthewson, Lisa (PhD)

Determiner systems and quantificational strategies evidence from Salish

Rosen, Eric (MA)

The postposing construction in Japanese

1995 Alumni

Ọla, Ọlanikẹ (PhD)

Optimality in Benue-Congo prosodic phonology and morphology

Qu, Yanfeng (PhD)

Object noun phrase dislocation in Mandarin Chinese

Thompson, William (MA)

Paradigms and the acquisition of agreement morphology in German

Valerga, Vanessa N. (MA)

Phonological representation of Spanish vibrants

1994 Alumni

Choi, Sohee (MA)

Korean vowel harmony: an optimality account

Howett, Catherine (MA)

On the classification of predicates in Nłe?képmx (Thompson River Salish)

Jimmie, Mandy N. (MA)

A prosodic analysis of Nłek̉epmx reduplication

Li, Erica Wen (MA)

Passives in Mandarin Chinese

Roberts, Taylor (MA)

Subject and topic in St’át’imcets (Lillooet Salish)

1993 Alumni

Bessell, Nicola J. (PhD)

Towards a phonetic and phonological typology of post-velar articulation

Hunt, Katharine D. (PhD)

Clause structure, agreement and case in Gitksan

1992 Alumni

Blake, Susan J. (MA)

Two aspects of Sliammon (ɬáʔamɪnqən) phonology: glide/obstruent alternation and vowel length

Millard, David (MA)

The prosodic structure of Finnish and the theory of phonological government

1991 Alumni

Fee, E. Jane (PhD)

Underspecification, parameters, and the acquisition of vowels

1990 Alumni

Remnant, Daphne E. (MA)

Tongue root articulations: a case study of Lillooet

1988 Alumni

Andrews, Christina (MA)

Lexical phonology of Chilcotin

Bagemihl, Bruce (PhD)

Alternate phonologies and morphologies

Paradis, Johanne C. (MA)

The syllable structure of Japanese

1987 Alumni

Davis, Henry (PhD)

The acquisition of the English auxiliary system and its relation to linguistic theory

1986 Alumni

Nakata, Masahiko (MA)

Verbal compounds in Japanese: implications for morphological theory

Roberge, Yves (PhD)

The syntactic recoverability of null arguments

1985 Alumni

Elesseily, Nagat H. (MA)

Subject extraction from embedded clauses in standard Arabic

Ross, Martin (MA)

Japanese lexical phonology and morphology

1984 Alumni

Belvin, Robert S. (MA)

Nisgha syntax and the ergativity hypothesis

Thompson, Wendy (MA)

Reduplication in Nisgha

1982 Alumni

Hébert, Yvonne M. (PhD)

Transitivity in (Nicola Lake) Okanagan

Tse, Sou-Mee (PhD)

The acquisition of Cantonese phonology

1981 Alumni

Preuss, Renate Jutta (MA)

Colour naming in young children

1980 Alumni

Chan, Marjorie K.M. (MA)

Zhong-shan Phonology: A Synchronic and Diachronic Analysis of a Yue (Cantonese) Dialect

Fee, E. Jane (MA)

The relationship between mothers’ pronominal modifications and children’s acquisition of pronominal reference

Morgan, Lawrence R. (MA)

Kootenay-Salishan linguistic comparison : a preliminary study

1979 Alumni

Suzuki, Yoshiko (MA)

Directional verbs in English and Japanese

Woods, Howard B. (PhD)

A socio-dialectology survey of the English spoken in Ottawa: a study of sociological and stylistic variation in Canadian English

1978 Alumni

Pattison, Lois Cornelia (MA)

Douglas Lake Okanagan: phonology and morphology

Placzek, James Anthony (MA)

Classifiers in standard Thai : a study of semantic relations between headwords and classifiers

1977 Alumni

de Wolf, Gaelan (MA)

Tlingit phonology in a generative framework : an examination of phonological processes and abstract representation

Gerdts, Donna B. (MA)

Dialect survey of Halkomelem Salish

Nokony, Alicia Alexander (MA)

Meaning development in one child acquiring Dakota-Sioux as a first language

1976 Alumni

Gibson, Deborah Jean (MA)

A thesis on eh

Sándi, Gábor (MA)

The phonology of the dialects of England

Stevenson, Roberta C. (MA)

The pronunciation of English in British Columbia : an analysis of the responses to the phonological section of the Linguistic Survey of B. C., Postal Questionnaire (PQ3)

Wigod, Rebecca (MA)

The matter of metaphor and its importance for linguistics

1975 Alumni

Hawes, Lorna Joy (MA)

Some theories of language typology and language change

Matsuda, Hiroshi (MA)

A transformational study of Japanese reflexivization

1974 Alumni

Beckett, Eleanor (MA)

A linguistic analysis of Gurma

Machado-Holsti, Mina Estrela (MA)

Generative-transformational sketch of Portuguese syntax : a computer model

Ogawa, Toshimitsu Augustine (MA)

Study of Japanese relativization

1973 Alumni

Davison, Annie Souren (MA)

Interrogatives, negation and linguistic play in three children acquiring French as a first language

Powell, Mava Jo (MA)

Semantic analysis of ‘because’

1972 Alumni

Morshed, Abul Kalam Manzur (MA)

The phonological, morphological and syntactical patterns of standard colloquial Bengali and the Noakhali dialect

1971 Alumni

Ogawa, Nobuo (MA)

On the Japanese passive form

Swoboda, Leo John (MA)

Lillooet phonology, texts and dictionary

1969 Alumni

Kenwood, Christopher Michael (MA)

A study of slang and informal usage in the newspaper

1967 Alumni

Olaya, Norma Peralta (MA)

A phonological grammar of a dialect of Ilokano

Peralta-Pineda, Ponciano Bendiola (MA)

Tagalog transformational syntax : a preliminary statement

Staume, Guido (MA)

A glottochronological analysis of Latvian and Russian

Tan, Evangeline K. (MA)

The phonology of Tausug : a descriptive analysis

Yap, Fe Aldave (MA)

Synchronic analysis of Tagalog phonemes

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Undergraduate Studies

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Topics covered at McGill University include: the structure of the world’s languages at the level of sounds ( phonetics and phonology ), words (morphology), sentences ( syntax ), and meaning ( semantics ); how people learn languages ( acquisition ); how people use two languages ( bilingualism ); how to model and process linguistic data using computational methods ( computational linguistics ); how languages change over time (historical linguistics); and how languages vary in relation to region and social identity (dialectology and sociolinguistics). In addition to preparing students for advanced academic work in linguistics and related disciplines (e.g., anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, computer science, philosophy, or psychology), courses in linguistics provide a useful background for many careers, for example, language teaching, translation, child psychology, speech-language pathology, communication, and speech technology.

Joint Honours

Program requirement:.

The Major Concentration in Linguistics focuses on various aspects of linguistics, including theoretical linguistics (phonology, syntax and semantics); experimental linguistics (phonetics, laboratory phonology, language acquisition and psycholinguistics); computational linguistics; linguistic fieldwork and language revitalization; and language variation and change (sociolinguistics, dialectology and historical linguistics).

Required Courses (15 credits)

Linguistics: General introduction to linguistics, the scientific study of human language. Covers the core theoretical subfields of linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Also provides background on other subfields including sociolinguistics, pragmatics, historical linguistics, linguistic variation, and language acquisition.

Offered by: Linguistics

• Fall and Winter
• Winter 2025
• Andrei Munteanu

Linguistics: Transcription, identification, and production of speech sounds. Introduction to the acoustic properties of speech sounds, acoustic analysis of speech, and auditory phonetics.

• Prerequisite: LlNG 201

Linguistics: Introduction to phonological theory and analysis.

• Prerequisite: LING 330 .
• Heather Goad

Linguistics: Introduction to the rudiments of semantics, focusing on those aspects of meaning that are invariant across contexts and the ways in which the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituents.

• Prerequisites: LING 201 and one of the following: PHIL 210 , COMP 230 , MATH 318
• Brendan S Gillon

Linguistics: Introduction to the study of generative syntax of natural languages, emphasizing basic concepts and formalism: phrase structure rules, transformations, and conditions on rules.

• Prerequisite: LING 201 .
• Junko Shimoyama
• Martina Martinovic

*Required courses must be completed at McGill unless Departmental permission is obtained.

Complementary Courses (21 credits)

3 credits from the following:

Computer Science (Sci): Propositional Logic, predicate calculus, proof systems, computability Turing machines, Church-Turing thesis, unsolvable problems, completeness, incompleteness, Tarski semantics, uses and misuses of Gödel's theorem.

Offered by: Computer Science

• Prerequisite: CEGEP level mathematics.
• This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
• There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year

Mathematics & Statistics (Sci): Propositional logic: truth-tables, formal proof systems, completeness and compactness theorems, Boolean algebras; first-order logic: formal proofs, Gödel's completeness theorem; axiomatic theories; set theory; Cantor's theorem, axiom of choice and Zorn's lemma, Peano arithmetic; Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

Offered by: Mathematics and Statistics

• Prerequisite(s): MATH 235 or MATH 240 or MATH 242 .
• Jérôme Fortier

Philosophy: An introduction to propositional and predicate logic; formalization of arguments, truth tables, systems of deduction, elementary metaresults, and related topics.

Offered by: Philosophy

• Restriction: Not open to students who are taking or have taken MATH 318
• Michael Frank Hallett

18 credits in Linguistics (LING) chosen according to the student's interests. At least 9 of these credits must be at the 400/500 level.

Only 3 credits at the 200 level may count towards complementary credits.

The Minor Concentration in Linguistics focuses on basic Linguistics, the scientific study of human language, including phonetics and syntax, theoretical linguistics (phonology, syntax and semantics); experimental linguistics (phonetics, laboratory phonology, language acquisition and psycholinguistics); computational linguistics; linguistic fieldwork and language revitalization; and language variation and change (sociolinguistics, dialectology and historical linguistics). The program is expandable to the Major Concentration in Linguistics.

Required Courses (9 credits)

Complementary courses (9 credits).

9 credits in Linguistics chosen according to the student's interests. At least 3 of these credits must be at the 400 or 500 level. Only 3 credits at the 200 level may count towards complementary credits. Students who take LING 360 as one of their complementary courses may also count one of the following courses that are its prerequisites toward the complementary course requirement:

The B.A.; Honours in Linguistics program focuses on the various sub-areas of linguistics with substantial breadth and depth. The program includes an Honours Thesis that emphasizes the process of independent research. Honours students must maintain a GPA of 3.30 (B+ average) in their program courses and a minimum grade of B+ must be obtained in three out of four of the following courses: LING 330, LING 331, LING 360, LING 371, as well as LING 480D1/D2. According to Faculty of Arts regulations, Honours students must also maintain a minimum CGPA of 3.00 in general. The requirement for First Class Honours is a CGPA of 3.50 and a minimum grade of A- in the Honours Thesis.

Required Courses (21 credits)

Linguistics: Honours thesis.

• Students must register for both LING 480D1 and LING 480D2 .
• No credit will be given for this course unless both LING 480D1 and LING 480D2 are successfully completed in consecutive terms
• LING 480D1 and LING 480D2 together are equivalent to LING 480 .
• Jessica Coon, Heather Goad, Martina Martinovic

Linguistics: See LING 480D1 for course description.

• Prerequisite: LING 480D1 .

* Required courses must be completed at McGill unless Departmental permission is obtained.

Complementary Courses (39 credits)

24 credits of Linguistics (LING) courses, 15 of the credits in Linguistics must be at the 400/500 level and only 3 credits in Linguistics can be at the 200 level.

Other Fields

12 credits in related fields selected from the following list.

Computer Science

Computer Science (Sci): Introduction to computer programming in a high level language: variables, expressions, primitive types, methods, conditionals, loops. Introduction to algorithms, data structures (arrays, strings), modular software design, libraries, file input/output, debugging, exception handling. Selected topics.

• Prerequisite: a CEGEP level mathematics course
• Restrictions: Not open to students who have taken or are taking COMP 204 , COMP 208 , or GEOG 333 ; not open to students who have taken or are taking COMP 206 or COMP 250 .
• COMP 202 is intended as a general introductory course, while COMP 204 is intended for students in life sciences, and COMP 208 is intended for students in physical sciences and engineering.
• Faten M'hiri

Computer Science (Sci): Mathematical tools (binary numbers, induction,recurrence relations, asymptotic complexity,establishing correctness of programs). Datastructures (arrays, stacks, queues, linked lists,trees, binary trees, binary search trees, heaps,hash tables). Recursive and non-recursivealgorithms (searching and sorting, tree andgraph traversal). Abstract data types. Objectoriented programming in Java (classes andobjects, interfaces, inheritance). Selected topics.

• Prerequisite(s): MATH 140 or equivalent. COMP 202 or COMP 204 or COMP 208 (or equivalent).
• Corequisite(s): MATH 133
• Restriction(s): Not open to students who have taken or are taking ECSE 250 .
• Giulia Alberini

French Language and Literature

French (Arts): Bref historique de la linguistique française de F. de Saussure à nos jours. Description linguistique du français moderne (éléments de phonologie, de phonétique normative, de lexicologie, de sémantique évolutive et synchronique, de syntaxe et de morphologie).

Offered by: French Language & Literature

French (Arts): Histoire de la langue française, du bas-latin à la langue moderne. Étude de l'évolution phonétique, syntaxique, sémantique. Étude de textes des différentes époques.

French (Arts): Éléments de sociolinguistique et leur application aux pays francophones. Rapports entre les aspects phonologiques, grammaticaux et lexicologiques du parler et le milieu social. Langues en contact, planification linguistique.

Any course in language (other than the student's native language) - literature courses are not acceptable.

Mathematics

Mathematics & Statistics (Sci): Introduction to discrete mathematics and applications. Logical reasoning and methods of proof. Elementary number theory and cryptography: prime numbers, modular equations, RSA encryption. Combinatorics: basic enumeration, combinatorial methods, recurrence equations. Graph theory: trees, cycles, planar graphs.

• Corequisite: MATH 133 .
• Restriction: For students in any Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or Software Engineering programs. Others only with the instructor's permission. Not open to students who have taken or are taking MATH 235 .
• Jeremy Macdonald, Marcel K Goh

Philosophy: A survey of major positions of the mind-body problem, focusing on such questions as: Do we have minds and bodies? Can minds affect bodies? Is mind identical to body? If so, in what sense "identical"? Can physical bodies be conscious.

• David Davies

Philosophy: An examination of central notions in the philosophy of language (reference, meaning, and truth, e.g.), the puzzles these notions give rise to, and the relevance of these notions to such questions as: What is language? How is communication possible? What is understanding? Is language rule-governed.

• Prerequisites: PHIL 210 or equivalent and one intermediate course in philosophy

Psychology: The course is an introduction to the field studying how human cognitive processes, such as perception, attention, language, learning and memory, planning and organization, are related to brain processes. The material covered is primarily based on studies of the effects of different brain lesions on cognition and studies of brain activity in relation to cognitive processes with modern functional neuroimaging methods.

Offered by: Psychology

• 2 lectures; 1 conference
• Paul Masset

Psychology: A survey of issues in psycholinguistics, focusing on the nature and processing of language (e.g., how we understand speech sounds, words, sentences, and discourse). Also surveyed: language and thought, the biological foundations of language, and first language acquisition.

• Prerequisite: PSYC 212 or PSYC 213 .

Psychology: This course will examine issues in bilingualism, including second language acquisition in children and adults, critical period hypothesis, cognitive consequences and correlates of bilingualism, social psychological aspects of bilingualism, and bilingual education.

• Prerequisites: Introductory Psychology, and PSYC 340 or introduction to linguistics; or permission of instructor
• Debra Ann Titone

Psychology: The multi-disciplinary study of cognitive science, exploring the computer metaphor of the mind as an information-processing system. Focus on levels of analysis, symbolic modeling, Turing machines, neural networks, as applied to topics such as reasoning, vision, decision-making, and consciousness.

• Prerequisite(s): PSYC 212 or PSYC 213
• Restrictions: Not open to students who have taken PSYC 532 .

Psychology: Covers fundamental topics in deafness (sensory, perceptual, cognitive, social, linguistic, education and health issues) from an applied psychological perspective. Lectures and seminar presentations plus field work involving ASL/LSQ.

• Prerequisite: PSYC 340 or PSYC 316 or equivalent. Permission of instructor

Any course in statistics (from any department).

Students who wish to study at the Honours level in two disciplines can combine Joint Honours program components in any two Arts disciplines. For a list of available Joint Honours programs, see "Overview of Programs Offered" and "Joint Honours Programs".

Joint Honours students should consult an adviser in each department to discuss their course selection and their interdisciplinary research project (if applicable).

Joint Honours students must maintain a GPA of 3.30 (B+ average) in their program courses and a minimum grade of B+ must be obtained in three out of four of the following courses: LING 330, LING 331, LING 360, LING 371, as well as in the Joint Honours Thesis, LING 481D1/D2. According to Faculty of Arts regulations, Joint Honours students must also maintain a minimum CGPA of 3.00 in general.

The requirement for First Class Honours is a CGPA of 3.50 and a minimum grade of A- in the Joint Honours Thesis. Inquiries may be addressed to the departmental office or to the Adviser for Undergraduate Studies.

Required Courses (18 credits)

Linguistics: Research and writing of the Joint Honours thesis on an approved subject.

• Students must register for both LING 481D1 and LING 481D2 .
• No credit will be given for this course unless both LING 481D1 and LING 481D2 are successfully completed in consecutive terms
• LING 481D1 and LING 481D2 together are equivalent to LING 481
• Prerequisite: LING 481D1

Complementary Courses (18 credits)

15 credits of Linguistics courses (LING) chosen according to the student's interests. At least 9 of these credits must be at the 400/500 levels.

100 Level Courses

Registration for  First-Year Seminars  (FYS) is limited to students in their first year of study at McGill, i.e., newly admitted students in U0 or U1. These courses are designed to provide a closer interaction with professors and better working relations with peers than is available in large introductory courses. For more information about FYS and other course requirements, visit the  eCalendar . 

200 Level Courses

200 level courses are the main introductory courses  in all departments. Most courses do not have pre-requisites and are often ‘survey’ courses. These sometimes split into smaller conferences that go into depth about class topics.

300 Level Courses

300 level courses are  intermediate courses , meaning they are typically smaller and provide a more in-depth look at a subject than a 200 level introductory course. Often, there will be 200 level pre-requisites you must complete before you are allowed to register for the 300 level courses.

400 Level Courses

400 level courses are  advanced courses or seminar courses. There will often be 300 level pre-requisite courses you must complete before you are allowed to register for the 400 level courses. The two additional characters (D1, D2, N1, N2, J1, J2, J3) at the end of the seven-character course number identifies  multi-term courses . 

500 Level Courses

500 level courses are  high-level seminar courses , usually intended for students in Honours programs and graduate level students.

Useful Documents

Useful links, undergraduate program director, junko.shimoyama [at] mcgill.ca (prof. junko shimoyama)  .

Office: 1085 Dr. Penfield | room #219 Office Hours:  Monday and Wednesday 13:00 - 14:00

*When requesting an advising meeting or a degree audit with our Undergraduate Program Director please make sure to send the completed Program Tracking  (under the Useful Documents tab) form that applies to your situation.

The Arts OASIS website provides Arts students with general academic information and advice about issues such as faculty and degree requirements, registration issues, inter-faculty transfer, study away, academic standing, or graduation. In addition to advising students about such issues, either by appointment or on a daily drop-in basis, the Arts OASIS Faculty advisors offer a number of information sessions every term, such as degree planning workshops, study away workshops, and freshman information sessions.

What is linguistics?

What courses should I take?

You can find information about undergraduate program requirements under the Program tabs above, as well as helpful program-tracking forms under the Useful Documents  tab. 

Please note, required courses  must be taken at McGill, and not on exchange. It’s best to take required courses sooner rather than later, especially since some of them will be prerequisites for courses at higher levels.

It is not essential to finish all of your requirements in three semesters, but it is important to plan ahead, especially if you plan to go on exchange.

The course I    want to take is full. What should I do?

• Get yourself on the  waitlist . Waitlists open up after registration is complete for all different registration groups, which might mean you have to wait and check back if the waitlist isn't open. These dates vary from year to year, but typically waitlists open up in late June.
• If the waitlist is full, you can always check Minerva to see if students drop, in addition, you can contact the andria.de_luca [at] mcgill.ca (Administrative Student Affairs Coordinator) . Meanwhile, be sure to have a back-up plan!
• If there is a course that you really need/want to take, note that only the  course instructor  can grant you special permission to enroll in the course. Many instructors will tell you to wait until the semester gets going to see if students drop the course.

What is LING 488: Independent Study? Can I do one?

LING 488, Independent Study, is a semester-long course in which you work closely with a professor on a topic of mutual interest. Details are to be determined on a case-by-case basis, but in general this course involves independent reading, regular meetings, and a final project (often a term paper). In most cases, LING 488 will grow out of a topic in an upper-level course which the student would like to research further. Notes:

• It is the student’s responsibility to get approval from the professor  before  registering for LING 488.
• Generally, only  full-time faculty members  supervise independent study courses.
• There is no guarantee that you will be able to do an independent study course. It is always dependent on the professor’s existing commitments, interest, and your past academic performance.

What is LING 499: Internship? Can I do one?

Typically the way LING 499 works is as follows: a student gets pre-approval from a supervisor, and then does a summer internship related to linguistics. The for-credit portion (i.e. LING 499) then normally takes place during the following fall semester and is effectively an independent study course which somehow relates to or builds on your summer internship. The internship alone does not count for course credit.

In practice, there is no real difference between LING 488 (Independent Study, which can be done any semester on any mutually-agreed upon topic) and LING 499 (Internship, which normally happens in the fall and connects to an internship). In both 488 and 499, the course plan and evaluation are determined on a case by case basis, but usually involve some independent reading, regular meetings, and a final paper or project.

A reason that a student might decide to do LING 499 instead of LING 488 is that the Faculty of Arts offers an  Arts Internship Award  (which pays you to do an otherwise unpaid internship) and gives priority to applicants who intend to use the internship towards course credit.

How do I get involved in research in linguistics?

The linguistics department doesn’t keep a centralized list of research, volunteer or work opportunities, though many such opportunities do exist. The best way to get involved is to get in touch with professors directly and ask if there are any opportunities available. Often, this kind of work grows out of an upper-level course you have taken, after a professor has had a chance to get to know you. Since funding is limited, being willing to volunteer your time in a lab or research group may help you get your foot in the door.

I don't have the prerequisites for a course, but Minerva let me register. Is this okay?

No, it is your responsibility to ensure that you have completed all of the prerequisites listed (or have special permission from the instructor) before enrolling in a course.

Should I do Honours?

First, see "General Honours Information" written by Prof. Charles Boberg in the Useful Documents tab. Some important notes:

• Honours is a  trade-off . You graduate with a lot of depth in Linguistics, but at the expense of getting more breadth in other areas.
• Some of the important aspects of Honours––independent research experience, a close working relationship with a professor––can be achieved in other ways.
• While an Honours degree certainly flags you as a strong student, not all graduate programs require Honours.

In short:  if you find yourself wanting to take more Linguistics courses, if you are doing well in courses, and are excited about doing independent research, Honours might be for you!

How do I find an Honours thesis supervisor? How long is a thesis? How do I pick a topic?

You can find useful information about Linguistics Honours theses in the "Guidelines for Honours Thesis" written by Prof. Charles Boberg, found in the Useful Documents tab. In short:

• Approaching a potential supervisor is your responsibility . Ideally, this should be done the semester before you intend to be enrolled in the thesis course.
• As with independent study, generally only  full-time faculty members  supervise theses. Whether a professor agrees to supervise your thesis may depend on their existing commitments. In most cases, your thesis supervisor will be someone with whom you have taken one or more courses.

Past award recipients can be found on the People page.

Cremona Memorial Prize in Linguistics

Established in 2002 by a bequest from Isida Bernardinis Cremona, B.A. 1965, M.A. 1967, for outstanding students pursuing an Honours, Joint Honours or Major Concentration program in the Department of Linguistics. Awarded on the basis of high academic standing by the Faculty of Arts Scholarships Committee on the recommendation of the Department of Linguistics. Value varies.

U2 Academic Achievement Award

Awarded by the Department of Linguistics to an outstanding student completing U2 who have completed a minimum of 12 credits in Linguistics, on the basis of high academic standing in Linguistics courses.

Eligibility:

• Open to U2 students pursuing an Honours, Joint Honours, Major Concentration program, or, in exceptional circumstances, a Minor program in the Department of Linguistics.
• Minimum CGPA of 3.5
• A faculty-based committee from the Department of Linguistics recommends a candidate to the Department.
• Final decision made at the last Departmental Meeting in May.

Tie-breaker criteria (rank ordered):

• Overall CGPA
• Number of linguistics courses taken

Award for Academic Leadership

Awarded by the Department of Linguistics to a student who stands out with respect to dedication and engagement in Linguistics courses and contributions to other students’ learning experience.

• Open to graduating students pursuing an Honours, Joint Honours, Major Concentration program, or, in exceptional circumstances, a Minor program in the Department of Linguistics.
• The award is also open to graduating students pursuing an Interfaculty Honours or Major program in the Cognitive Science program whose first or second area of specialization is Linguistics.
• Nominations will be made by any member of the department
• Nomination will include the name of one supporting faculty member and one supporting peer. These people will be consulted in the determination of the ranked lists within the student committee and within the departmental committee
• A committee of 3 non-graduating students chosen by members of SLUM will submit a ranked list to the department by the end of April.
• A faculty-based committee from the Department of Linguistics recommends a candidate to the Department, evaluating dedication and engagement and using the ranked list submitted by the student committee to evaluate the contributions made to other students.

Award for Department Citizenship

Awarded by the Department of Linguistics to a student who stands out with respect to involvement in the life of the department.

• Nominations will be made by any member of the department.
• A committee of 3 non-graduating students chosen by members of SLUM will submit a list of candidates with justification to the Department by the end of April.

Criteria (order irrelevant):

• Involvement in organizations and projects such as SLUM, Bag Lunch Talks, Colloquia, tutoring, and related events
• Encouragement of involvement of other students
• Involvement in the improvement of the department
• Promotion of positive student-professor/professor-student relations
• Involvement in organization of Linguistics conferences

Award for Excellence in Research

Awarded by the Department of Linguistics to a student with an outstanding research project and demonstrated proficiency in research skills.

• Open to students pursuing an Honours, Joint Honours, Major Concentration program, or, in exceptional circumstances, a Minor program in the Department of Linguistics.
• The award is also open to students pursuing an Interfaculty Honours or Major program in the Cognitive Science program whose first or second area of specialization is Linguistics.
• Nominated by supervisor of research project

Criteria (order irrelevant and will vary depending on type of research)

• Understanding of theoretical context
• Development of hypothesis
• Research design and implementation
• Data analysis
• Understanding of consequences

Tie-breaker criteria (rank ordered)

• Presentation of research at a conference or submission of paper for publication
• Additional research in Linguistics/related areas.

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Department Of Linguistics | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

• Theses and Papers

PDFs of our Linguistics theses are available through the QEII library website . Our list of Ph.D. theses, M.A. theses, M.A. non-thesis papers, M.Phil. papers, and Ph.D. comprehensive papers is updated yearly.

Guidelines for grad students

• SGS guidelines  (For MA and PhD students: how to write and structure your thesis, preparinɡ your thesis for submission, submittinɡ your thesis for examination; final submission and publication of your thesis). (PhD students only: oral defence information).
• M.A. guidelines
• Ph.D. guidelines (including for comprehensive exams)

Related information

• Topic approval form
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• Undergraduate

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Undergraduate Thesis, Practicum and Independent Study Courses

The department offers many experiential learning opportunities to program students, including opportunities to collaborate on faculty members’ research or undertake original research with a faculty member’s supervision. Level 4 Program students may also practice applying skills acquired in the program by applying for the Teaching Practicum or Speech Language Pathology Practicum.

Students interested in pursuing research opportunities are encouraged to contact faculty with relevant interests from the second year of the program to discuss their interests and research opportunities.

Research Practicum (LING 3RP3)

In the Research Practicum (LING 3RP3), students join the lab or research team of a faculty member and learn hands-on research skills by contributing to the research activities of the team. Skills might include how to run experiments, conduct interviews, review literature, or analyze data, among others. Students should start by expressing their interest to their intended faculty supervisor and inquiring about available opportunities. Enrolment in the Research Practicum requires permission of the faculty supervisor and of the Department.

• Instructions to request permission for Ling 3RP3
• Course Requirements for Ling 3RP3 

Independent Study (LING 4II3, GERMAN 4II3, ITALIAN 4II3)

In Independent Study courses (LING 4II3, GERMAN 4II3, ITALIAN 4II3), students conduct a one-semester research project. An Independent Study might involve original empirical research or advanced reading in a selected topic. Ling 4II3 is open to students in Level 4 of a program in Linguistics or Cognitive Science, with a GPA of at least 9.0. Italian 4II3 and German 4II3 are open to students in any program who have completed ITALIAN/GERMAN 2ZZ3 or an equivalent course. Enrolment in an Independent Study course requires permission of the faculty supervisor and of the Department.

• Inst ructi ons to request permission for Independent Stud y
• Course Requirements for Independent Study
• Suggested Course Outline for Independent Study

Honours Thesis (LING 4Y06)

In the Honours Thesis program (LING 4Y06), students conduct a year-long original research project under the supervision of a faculty member. Thesis Students present their research findings in an extended written research paper and a presentation at the Department’s Student Research Day in April. LING 4Y06 is open to students in Level 4 of a program in Linguistics or Cognitive Science of Language, with a GPA of at least 9.0. Enrolment in the Honours Thesis requires permission of the faculty supervisor and of the Department.

• Instructions to request permission for Honours Thesis
• Course Requirements for Honours Thesis
• Suggested Course Outline for Honours Thesis

Speech-Language Pathologist Practicum (LING 4SL3)

The SLP Practicum (LING 4SL3) is an Experiential Learning course. Students complete at least 36 hours observing and working under the supervision of a registered Speech-Language Pathologist. Students will complete a Learning Portfolio documenting their experience. The supervisor will work with each student to define responsibilities in the placement, but usually students will observe the supervisor’s work for the first few weeks, then complete assigned tasks to help the supervisor in the later weeks.

All practicum placements are in the Hamilton area. Some are in clinics or hospitals. Placements with the school board often involve visiting a different school each week. Some placements are accessible by transit and others are hard to get to without a car. Students will have the opportunity to rank preferred sites but it is not always possible to assign students to their top-ranked choice. The LING 4SL3 course is open to students in Level 4 of Honours Cognitive Science of Language with a GPA of at least 9.0. Enrolment in the SLP Practicum requires permission of the Department.

• Instructions to request permission for SLP Practicum

Teaching Practicum for Linguists (LING 4TP3)

The Teaching Practicum for Linguists is an Experiential Learning course. Students complete at least 36 hours observing and practicing teaching under the supervision of a Linguistics instructor. Students will complete a Learning Portfolio documenting their experience. Practice teaching topics will be offered in TESL or Linguistics, on rotation. Most practicum placements are on campus. LING 4TP3 is open to students in Level 4 of a program in Linguistics with a GPA of at least 9.0. Enrolment in the Teaching Practicum requires permission of the Department.

• A link with application instructions will be added soon

Research Considerations

The majority of the research conducted in the Department involves human participants and as such falls under the jurisdiction of the  McMaster Research Ethics Board . If you plan on doing research involving human participants for your project, you should be aware that you will have to apply for a clearance from the board. It is advisable that you do so early on (for thesis preferably by the end of October) as the review process takes some time. Application forms, tips and more can be found at the MREB website or by clicking  here .

Students interested in research with Indigenous speakers and communities, especially those of the Six Nations of the Grand River, are expected to familiarize themselves and follow the  guidelines for students working with the Six Nations of the Grand River .

Info: Welcome to the new CDH website!

In 2024-25, we are celebrating ten years as a center at Princeton. Explore our redesigned website to get better acquainted with us and the many things we do!

Senior Thesis Spotlight: Fernando Avilés-García used artificial intelligence to analyze Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy.’

13 July 2024

• Liz Fuller-Wright

Fernando Avilés-García tackled 700-year-old literature with an innovative approach: building an artificially intelligent tool to analyze the language of Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”

This article was originally posted on the Princeton University homepage .

In his final year at Princeton, Fernando Avilés-García tackled 700-year-old literature with an innovative approach: building an artificially intelligent tool to analyze the language of Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy.”

“The Comedy has been egregiously underserved by modern language models, considering how weighty a text it is,” said Avilés-García, a computer science major with a certificate from the Department of French and Italian. “This project let me overlap my love of solving puzzles through code with my passion for Italian.”

“It’s one of the most original senior theses I’ve read at Princeton through the years — and I’ve read some great senior theses,” said Gaetana Marrone-Puglia, a professor of French and Italian who has taught at Princeton since 1988. “Fernando brought a computer model to texts that normally are in the hands of medievalists. It’s a perfect marriage of science and humanities.”

The final product, “Divining language: Unearthing medieval Italian through natural language processing (NLP),” contributed to his graduating with departmental high honors and winning the inaugural Lucio Caputo Senior Thesis Prize “for an outstanding thesis on the literature, language, culture, economy, history, politics or society of Italy.”

“He has created a tool that I think will be beneficial for the Italian literature community and will inspire future studies,” said Christiane Fellbaum , Avilés-García’s thesis adviser. She is a lecturer with the rank of professor in computer science , linguistics and the Council of the Humanities , as well as a Ph.D. graduate of Princeton in linguistics.

Avilés-García (center) is joined by Marrone-Puglia and Fellbaum, who sits with the CDH Executive committee.

In his first programming courses at Princeton, Avilés-García found himself delighting in the rush of conquering problems. “I really got hooked on that feeling of, ‘I’m making things!’” he said.

By his sophomore year, he was ready to declare computer science as his major. “But part of me was scared, because all the computer science kids I knew had done so much coding in high school,” he said. “Part of me wondered, ‘Am I cut out for this?’”

Once, when Avilés-García was assisting with an intro course, a first-year student asked him about applying a data structure that he’d never even heard of.

But then he thought, “If I’m good enough to teach these kids, or at least debug their code, I can hang in there,” he recalled. So he declared the major and followed his love of language into AI-based translation, eventually creating an app that can translate whole books at once.

Many undergraduates naturally build bridges between humanities and AI, said Natalia Ermolaev , executive director of the Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton. “This happens all the time at Princeton, because we have so many computer science majors that secretly love classics or Italian literature or medieval architecture,” she said.

“So they come to us saying, ‘Please give me a text to work with, or some problem that I can apply my computational knowledge to.’ And then they are floored by the fact that they have to create a dataset, or deal with a language that doesn’t easily get plugged into the models. We see the lightbulbs go off as they gain a fresh understanding of the limitations of models, and just how much of the Internet is English focused. So then comes the creativity. Do you tweak the models or enhance your data? In that process, you learn a lot about the material and about the language, and from there about the culture.”

Born in Mexico City and raised in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, Avilés-García grew up bilingual in English and Spanish, and he fell in love with Italian during summers in Sicily.

So when he was looking for an subject to tackle with his AI language modeling skills, his French and Italian adviser Simone Marchesi steered him toward one of the greatest works in any language: Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” a three-volume journey from Hell to Paradise written between 1308 and 1321.

Just one problem: Dante wrote in an archaic form of a Tuscan dialect, so even modern Italian language models struggle with the text, and English-trained models fare much worse.

“Dante is the father of the Italian language, but his text is not standard Italian,” said Marchesi, a professor of French and Italian and a 2002 Ph.D. graduate of Princeton in comparative literature. It took months of effort, and collaborations with programmers from the University of Pisa, for Avilés-García to train his model to parse medieval Italian.

“Once you have that, you can run fun and intriguing and promising queries, as Fernando has been doing,” Marchesi said.

Avilés-García began quantifying words that frequently appear together in the Comedy.

He struck gold when he ran queries on the noun “love” ( amore ). He guessed some words that would accompany it — Beatrice (Dante’s muse), heart, the verb love (amare) , affection, sweet, beautiful, beauty, woman, wife, desire, flesh — then ran the model.

He was surprised that almost none of his guesses regularly appear within 15 words of amore , but many words related to light (shine, star, ray) and darkness (night) do. When he turned back to the text, that unexpected connection unlocked a new insight. “Dante describes Hell as a place devoid of stars,” he said. “Then I started seeing that Hell is defined by an absence of this much bigger thing: love.”

One of the strengths of interdisciplinary AI research at Princeton is the presence of deep expertise in many subject areas. In this case, Aviles turned to one of the world’s leading Dante experts, Marchesi, to ask if the connection between stars and love and Hell was a trite observation that scholars have recognized for centuries or a radically new concept, or somewhere in between.

“What he has found is real, I would say, and not self-evident,” Marchesi said. Most scholars, he added, have focused on the role of stars as navigational tools, and thus Hell as a disorienting place. “Fernando has proved that a larger conceptual constellation is at stake in their absence.”

Marchesi says he is intrigued by the promise of this new language model. “When you get trained for your job as an academic, you get trained to answer old questions,” he said. “The really exciting part is crossing paths with someone who can ask new questions.”

He looks forward to using this AI model and its future iterations in his own research. “Someone who is a Princetonian once is a Princetonian forever,” he said. “I can reach out to Fernando wherever he goes after Princeton and ask questions and get friendly answers. It’s beautiful.”

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August 27, 2024

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A world mired in conflict calls for international tribunals that play multiple roles

by Radboud University Nijmegen

The International Court of Justice in The Hague has been busier than ever in recent years: it has been asked to render judgments and issue advisory opinions on conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine and Myanmar, among others, and it settles border disputes all over the world. What roles does this Court of Justice play in such cases, and how can its authority be explained? Rosa Möhrlein examined these questions and will defend her Ph.D. thesis at Radboud University on 28 August.

In national legal systems such as that of the Netherlands, the roles and powers of a court, court of appeal or tribunal are fairly clear. It is different for international tribunals, which operate in the international legal system, partly due to the fact that regulations have not been drawn up by a central legislative body. The absence of any compulsory jurisdiction for international tribunals is also often cited as a complicating factor.

Delicate balance

"An international court therefore constantly faces challenges relating to its roles and has to try to strike a delicate balance: offering a resolution to the dispute without antagonizing the parties," Möhrlein writes.

In her research, Möhrlein deconstructs various rulings and advisory opinions by a number of interstate tribunals: the International Court of Justice (not to be confused with the International Criminal Court), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Appellate Body of the WTO. Based on i) the legal issues of the dispute, ii) the application and interpretation of the law in the relevant case and iii) the answer or conclusion given by these tribunals, she identifies five judicial roles: dispute resolution, legal clarification, judicial lawmaking, legitimation, and control and compliance.

"Dispute resolution is often cited as the cornerstone of international law," explains Möhrlein. "Understandably so, as interstate tribunals have often been established with the notion that they provide an alternative to armed conflict. But it is usually unclear exactly what dispute resolution entails and where the boundaries lie for what a court actually does within this role. In addition, other important roles are performed that also matter greatly for the development of stable relations between states as well as the formation and interpretation of the law. It is important to have a clear picture of those roles because that also explains why a court has and maintains authority."

A 'controversial crowbar'

"Judicial lawmaking involves not just applying the law, but also providing interpretations relating to how the law should be understood in case of gaps and in new areas of law. This is a controversial role given that it could see the International Court of Justice encroach too much on territory where only states have competence: the creation of new obligations in international law. Legitimation is also an important role in international rulings and advisory opinions.

"One example is the advisory opinion in the Namibia case, where the situation was politically deadlocked and the request for an opinion was supposed to signal a breakthrough. If you do it wrong, it becomes a controversial crowbar; if you do it right, it delivers valuable guidance," says Möhrlein.

Möhrlein's research offers explanations as to why international tribunals possess authority and why many states (continue to) knock on the Court's door.

"On the one hand, there is a perception that a court of this nature is limited in what it can achieve due to its focus on dispute resolution. On the other hand, rulings and advisory opinions are frequently used as arguments in other cases, including national ones. One explanation for this is that the International Court of Justice goes beyond simply performing a dispute resolution role. You can see this, for example, in the advisory case relating to the wall Israel built around the West Bank.

"The Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion on this in 2004 and again last July. While these opinions are not (so far) improving the situation on the ground, they are seen as a guide to what is permissible in international law in this area and what is not. Moreover, they can damage a country's reputation and offer direction in terms of how the conflict is talked about," Möhrlein writes.

This may be why states continue to turn to the International Court of Justice.

Provided by Radboud University Nijmegen

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