Program Overview

Linguistics Master's

Program Overview

The Master of Arts in Linguistics (General degree) offers students broad training in all core areas of the discipline. Our MA program prepares students for challenging careers in a variety of industries, including government, education, law, language documentation, description and language archiving, and natural language processing. Our MA programs also serve as an excellent foundation for doctoral studies in linguistics and other language-related fields such as speech pathology, deaf education, audiology, computational linguistics, or the teaching of English as a second language.

Program Details

• Program Type: Master of Arts (M.A.)
• Format: On Campus
• Estimated Time to Complete: 2 years
• Credit Hours: 36

Requirements

• Tuition & Aid: Information available upon request
• How to Apply: Information available upon request

Why Earn a Linguistics Master's?

The department of Linguistics, in close collaboration with Library and Information Science, Learning Technologies, and Computer Science, offers a collaborative environment for developing innovative curricula that incorporate research on language with database design and management, text mining, computational and quantitative methods in linguistics, and natural language processing. We project a Linguistics Program with international partners in the fields of TESOL and language data archiving, preservation, and dissemination.

Marketable Skills

• Language structure analysis
• Analyze language function and use
• Analyze diverse populations' linguistic behaviors
• Critical thinking
• Formulate solutions to complex issues

Linguistics Master's Highlights

Our strengths lie in our established TESOL program and research areas in language variation and change, language documentation, and the linguistic analysis of literature. We also have a new focus of language technology and language data curation. Our international collaborations currently are with Mexico, India, Pakistan and China.

UNT is one of a few Linguistics programs in the country to offer regular courses in the linguistic analysis of poetry and prose. The courses focus on the many kinds of repetition that are used by the world’s great writers, which have the effect of making literary texts a permanent part of the world’s art.

Beginning full-time students who meet all qualifications may apply for financial assistance from the UNT office of Student Financial Aid and Scholarships. In addition, beginning and continuing students may apply for financial assistance from the Department of Linguistics.

We also offer a Graduate Academic Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.

UNT Linguistics is supported by an active linguistics research community at UNT with ties across campus and with local, national, and international communities.

Our practicum in ESL is often available at an international venue.

What Can You Do With a Linguistics Master's?

A degree in Linguistics makes students competitive for jobs in:

• Advertising
• Codes and code-breaking
• Language education
• Law — forensic linguistics
• Marketing
• Speech — language pathology and audiology

Because linguistics provides students with the skills to analyze language, companies such as Microsoft, Google and Apple also are eager to hire students with linguistics degrees.

Linguistics Master's Courses You Could Take

• Phonology I (3 hrs): Introduction to phonological theory and analysis based on cross-linguistic evidence. Topics: phonological representations including features, syllables and metrical structure; phonological processes; phonological typology and universals.
• Syntax I (3 hrs): Detailed study of the morpho-syntax and semantics of English and selected non-Indo-European languages in terms of contemporary linguistic theory.
• Semantics and Pragmatics I (3 hrs): Examines how meaning emerges at the word, sentence, constructional and utterance level and how it is acquired by children and second-language learners.
• Language Typology and Universals (3 hrs): Data-oriented comparison and classification of the languages of the world according to their morphological and syntactic characteristics (role relations, word order, causatives, relative clauses, comparison, etc.) Emphasis is on working through real data from many languages.
• Psycholinguistics (3 hrs): Deals with a variety of formal cognitive mechanisms that are relevant to the knowledge and use of natural languages. Primary emphasis is on the modular view of the mind and its consequences for both L1 and L2 language acquisition.
• Research Design in Linguistics (3 hrs): Provides an introduction to research methods in linguistics and applied linguistics/ESL with a focus on empirical research and the social and behavioral aspect of language science. Covers a range of techniques for conducting linguistic research including language data elicitation, data compilation, and data mining.