Graduate- spanish linguistics
The Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese offers an M.A. in Spanish with concentration in Spanish Linguistics, and a PhD in Spanish that includes specializations in Spanish and Romance Linguistics. PhD students in Spanish or Romance Linguistics may also obtain a certificate in SLATE (Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education).
Our goal is to train students who are at the forefront of research in their area of linguistics, broadly conceived (e.g. syntactic theory, morphology, second language acquisition, historical linguistics, phonetics and phonology, language contact, etc.) and at the same time have a very solid background in all areas pertaining to the structure, history and sociolinguistics of the Spanish language.
An important part of our students' formation involves conducting research alongside faculty members campuswide. This hands-on experience not only allows students to build relationships with faculty members but also prepares them to be top-notch scholars and researchers in their own right. As such, our graduate students regularly present their work at national and international meetings in both Spanish/Romance linguistics and general linguistics.
Our program also has strong ties with the Department of Linguistics and our graduate students often work closely with those faculty members. This helps to strengthen their background in their area of linguistics, and enhances the quality of their research.
For the MA degree, students are expected to complete coursework in all main aspects of the structure of the Spanish language (phonetics/phonology, morphology and syntax), as well as in Spanish sociolinguistics, history of the Spanish language and second language acquisition.
At the PhD level, students specialize in one of the aforementioned areas and typically complement their coursework on Spanish with relevant offerings in general linguistics as well as in psychology, speech and hearing, computer science and/or other Romance languages.