The Undergraduate Program

---

Your Major

Designing Your Major Program

The Linguistics major allows students a lot of flexibility in choosing what courses to take and what order to take them in. This page is here to help you decide how to structure your own major program, depending on your interests.

In What Order Should I Take My Courses?

For nearly all LING courses, the only official prerequisite is LING 101/Introduction to Language. However, there are some cases where having a bit more background information might help you get more out of a course.

For example, a great many courses build on basic ideas in phonology and syntax. So you may want to take LING 200/Phonology and/or LING 201/Syntax fairly early in your career. These two courses are both offered every spring, and each would count as one of your three required core courses.

What Courses Should I Choose?

You are interested in word and sentence structure, especially the way that words or sentences are put together and interpreted:

• LING 201 — Syntax
• LING 527 — Morphology
• LING 537 — Semantics
• LING 539 — Language of Time
• LING 310 — Formal Perspectives on African-American English
• LING 333 — Human Language and Animal Communication Systems

You are interested in meaning, logic, and philosophy of language:

• LING 410 — Philosophy of Language
• LING 455 — Symbolic Logic
• LING 537 — Semantics
• LING 545 — Language and Mind

See also the Philosophy courses that are approved to count as LING major electives

You are interested in speech sound structure, including how speech sounds are produced and perceived, and how languages differ in the way sounds combine:

• LING 200 — Phonology
• LING 520 — Linguistic Phonetics
• LING 422 — Research Methods in Phonetics and Laboratory Phonology
• LING 524 — Phonological Theory II – graduate seminar, open to advanced undergraduates

You are interested in speech and hearing science or speech pathology:

• LING 200 — Phonology
• LING 201 — Syntax
• LING 203 — Language Acquisition and Development
• LING 520 — Linguistic Phonetics
• LING 547 — Language Deficits and Cognition

See also the SPHS/COMM courses that are approved to count as LING major electives

You are interested in social, cultural, and historical aspects of language:

• LING 202 — Linguistic Variation and Language Change
• LING 302 — Language and Power
• LING 306 — Language and Nationalism
• LING 541 — Sociolinguistics
• LING 542 — Pidgins and Creoles
• LING 558 — Mesoamerican Writing Systems

You are interested in language teaching or education:

• LING 200 — Phonology
• LING 201 — Syntax
• LING 203 — Language Acquisition and Development
• LING 558 — Mesoamerican Writing Systems
• LING 560 — Mesoamerican Languages and Linguistics
• LING 562 — Structure of Russian
• LING 563 — Structure of Japanese

See also approved LING electives offered under English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Romance Languages, Slavic, and Spanish.

You are interested in all things linguistic:

Another option is to put together a “sampler” program — choose 1~2 courses from several of the above areas to get a taste of the different areas of linguistics.