About the Program
The Department of Linguistics takes a broad approach to the study of language. The department covers not only the standard core areas of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics, but also historical linguistics, field linguistics and language documentation, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, and language in society. The Graduate Program trains students to do the kind of research that seeks to discover and provide explanations for general properties of linguistic form, meaning, and usage. The department has a strong commitment to language documentation as well as cutting edge theoretical training.
Berkeley's graduate program is a PhD program in which students earn an MA along the way.
Admissions
Admission to the University
Minimum Requirements for Admission
The following minimum requirements apply to all graduate programs and will be verified by the Graduate Division:
- A bachelor’s degree or recognized equivalent from an accredited institution;
- A grade point average of B or better (3.0);
- If the applicant comes from a country or political entity (e.g., Quebec) where English is not the official language, adequate proficiency in English to do graduate work, as evidenced by a TOEFL score of at least 90 on the iBT test, 570 on the paper-and-pencil test, or an IELTS Band score of at least 7 on a 9-point scale (note that individual programs may set higher levels for any of these); and
- Sufficient undergraduate training to do graduate work in the given field.
Applicants Who Already Hold a Graduate Degree
The Graduate Council views academic degrees not as vocational training certificates, but as evidence of broad training in research methods, independent study, and articulation of learning. Therefore, applicants who already have academic graduate degrees should be able to pursue new subject matter at an advanced level without the need to enroll in a related or similar graduate program.
Programs may consider students for an additional academic master’s or professional master’s degree only if the additional degree is in a distinctly different field.
Applicants admitted to a doctoral program that requires a master’s degree to be earned at Berkeley as a prerequisite (even though the applicant already has a master’s degree from another institution in the same or a closely allied field of study) will be permitted to undertake the second master’s degree, despite the overlap in field.
The Graduate Division will admit students for a second doctoral degree only if they meet the following guidelines:
- Applicants with doctoral degrees may be admitted for an additional doctoral degree only if that degree program is in a general area of knowledge distinctly different from the field in which they earned their original degree. For example, a physics PhD could be admitted to a doctoral degree program in music or history; however, a student with a doctoral degree in mathematics would not be permitted to add a PhD in statistics.
- Applicants who hold the PhD degree may be admitted to a professional doctorate or professional master’s degree program if there is no duplication of training involved.
Applicants may apply only to one single degree program or one concurrent degree program per admission cycle.
Required Documents for Applications
- Transcripts: Applicants may upload unofficial transcripts with your application for the departmental initial review. If the applicant is admitted, then official transcripts of all college-level work will be required. Official transcripts must be in sealed envelopes as issued by the school(s) attended. If you have attended Berkeley, upload your unofficial transcript with your application for the departmental initial review. If you are admitted, an official transcript with evidence of degree conferral will not be required.
- Letters of recommendation: Applicants may request online letters of recommendation through the online application system. Hard copies of recommendation letters must be sent directly to the program, not the Graduate Division.
- Evidence of English language proficiency: All applicants from countries or political entities in which the official language is not English are required to submit official evidence of English language proficiency. This applies to applicants from Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Latin America, the Middle East, the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, most European countries, and Quebec (Canada). However, applicants who, at the time of application, have already completed at least one year of full-time academic course work with grades of B or better at a US university may submit an official transcript from the US university to fulfill this requirement. The following courses will not fulfill this requirement:
- courses in English as a Second Language,
- courses conducted in a language other than English,
- courses that will be completed after the application is submitted, and
- courses of a non-academic nature.
If applicants have previously been denied admission to Berkeley on the basis of their English language proficiency, they must submit new test scores that meet the current minimum from one of the standardized tests. Official TOEFL score reports must be sent directly from Educational Test Services (ETS). The institution code for Berkeley is 4833. Official IELTS score reports must be mailed directly to our office from the British Council. TOEFL and IELTS score reports are only valid for two years.
Where to Apply
Visit the Berkeley Graduate Division application page.
Departmental Requirements
In additional to the general materials required by the University we ask that you include:
Writing Sample: A writing sample is required of all applicants. Ideally, this sample would be a research paper on a linguistic topic, but it should in any event demonstrate the applicant's competence in writing analytic expository prose. The writing sample is to be submitted/uploaded with your online application.
For detailed information as to what we are looking for please go to our website at Linguistics.
Doctoral Degree Requirements
MA Curriculum
| Code | Title | Units |
|---|---|---|
| LINGUIS 200 | Graduate Proseminar in Linguistics | 1 |
| LINGUIS 211A | Advanced Phonology I | 3 |
| LINGUIS 220A | Advanced Syntax I | 3 |
| LINGUIS 230 | Advanced Comparative and Historical Linguistics | 3 |
| Language & Cognition: Select one of the following: | 3 | |
| LINGUIS 205 | Advanced Cognitive Linguistics | 3 |
| LINGUIS 208 | Advanced Psycholinguistics | 3 |
| LINGUIS 225 | Construction Grammar: The Relationship Between Thought and Language | 3 |
| LINGUIS 242 | Language, Cognition, and Communication | 3 |
| LINGUIS 243 | Language, Computation, and Cognition | 3 |
| Language & Social Context: Select one of the following: | 3-4 | |
| LINGUIS 123 | Pragmatics | 3 |
| LINGUIS 150 | Sociolinguistics | 3 |
| LINGUIS 245 | Anthropological Linguistics | 3 |
| LINGUIS 250B | Sociolinguistic Analysis: Language Contact | 3 |
| LINGUIS 250C | Sociolinguistic Analysis: Language and Gender | 3 |
| LINGUIS 250D | Sociolinguistic Analysis: Conversation/Discourse Analysis | 3 |
| LINGUIS 250E | Sociolinguistic Analysis: Endangered Languages | 3 |
| LINGUIS 255 | Introduction to Sociocultural Linguistics | 3 |
| Electives: | ||
| LINGUIS 210 | Advanced Phonetics | 3 |
| LINGUIS 211B | Advanced Phonology II | 3 |
| LINGUIS 215 | Advanced Morphology | 3 |
| LINGUIS 220B | Advanced Syntax II | 3 |
| LINGUIS 221 | Advanced Formal Semantics I | 3 |
| LINGUIS 222 | Advanced Linguistic Typology | 3 |
| LINGUIS 234 | Indo-European Linguistics | 3 |
| LINGUIS 270 | Structure of a Particular Language | 3 |
| LINGUIS 290A | Topics in Linguistic Theory: Syntax | 3 |
| LINGUIS 290B | Topics in Linguistic Theory: Semantics | 3 |
| LINGUIS 290D | Topics in Linguistic Theory: Pragmatics | 3 |
| LINGUIS 290E | Topics in Linguistic Theory: Phonology | 3 |
| LINGUIS 290F | Topics in Linguistic Theory: Diachronic Linguistics | 3 |
| LINGUIS 290H | Topics in Linguistic Theory: Linguistic Reconstruction | 3 |
| LINGUIS 290L | Additional Seminar on Special Topics to Be Announced | 3 |
| LINGUIS 290M | Topics in Linguistic Theory: Psycholinguistics | 3 |
PhD Curriculum
| Code | Title | Units |
|---|---|---|
| LINGUIS 240A | Advanced Field Methods | 4 |
| LINGUIS 240B | Advanced Field Methods | 4 |
| LINGUIS C160 | Quantitative Methods in Linguistics | 4 |
| LINGUIS 213 | Advanced Experimental Phonetics | 3 |
| LINGUIS 243 | Language, Computation, and Cognition | 3 |
| LINGUIS 201 | Advanced Graduate Proseminar in Linguistics | 2 |
Faculty and Instructors
+ Indicates this faculty member is the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award.
Faculty
Christine Beier, Assistant Adjunct Professor. Language endangerment, documentation, and revitalization, Amazonian languages.
Amy Rose Deal, Associate Professor. Meaning, grammar, endangered languages, Native American languages, semantics, syntax, word structure, language universals, language variation, Nez Perce language.
Research Profile
Susanne Gahl, Associate Professor. Linguistics, psycholinguistics, linguistic structure, language production, aphasia and related language disorders.
Research Profile
+ Andrew Garrett, Professor. Linguistics, English, California, language change, Indo-European languages, historical linguistics, northern California Indian languages, linguistic structure, typology, ancient Greek, Latin, Irish, Oceanic languages.
Research Profile
Larry M. Hyman, Professor. Linguistics, phonological theory, typology, African languages, the Niger-Congo family, especially the comparative and historical study of the Bantu language family.
Research Profile
Sharon Inkelas, Professor. Morphology, phonology, reduplication, child phonology.
Research Profile
Peter S. E. Jenks, Associate Professor. Syntax, semantics, linguistics, linguistic theory, Thai, sudanese languages, African languages, Southeast Asian languages.
Research Profile
Keith Johnson, Professor. Phonetics.
Research Profile
Susan S. Lin, Assistant Professor. Phonetics, articulatory phonetics, ultrasound speech research.
Research Profile
+ Lev D. Michael, Associate Professor. Linguistic typology, Amazonian languages, anthropological linguistics, language contact and areal typology, language documentation and description.
Research Profile
+ Line Mikkelsen, Associate Professor. Morphology, syntax, semantics, Germanic and California languages.
Research Profile
Terry Regier, Professor. Computational methods, language and thought, semantic universals.
Research Profile
Richard Rhodes, Associate Professor. American Indian languages, lexical semantics, lexicography, Algonquian languages, Ojibwe, Mixe-Zoquean languages, mixed languages, Michif, Sayula Popoluca.
Research Profile
Eve E. Sweetser, Professor. Subjectivity, syntax, semantics, cognitive linguistics, historical linguistics, Celtic languages, speech act theory, semantic change, grammaticalization, gesture, metaphor, iconicity, viewpoint, construction grammar, semantics of grammatical constructions.
Research Profile
Lecturers
Sherry L. Hicks, Lecturer. American Sign Language.
Jesse Zymet, Lecturer. Phonology and its interfaces with morphology and phonetics, learnability, computational psycholinguistics, Malagasy, Maragoli.
Research Profile
Emeritus Faculty
Leanne Hinton, Professor Emeritus. Linguistics, sociolinguistics, American Indian languages, language loss, language revival.
Research Profile
Gary B. Holland, Professor Emeritus. Historical linguistics, Indo-European linguistics, poetics, early Indo-European languages, linguistic typology, historical syntax, history of linguistics.
Research Profile
Paul Kay, Professor Emeritus. Linguistics, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, pragmatics, syntax, semantics, lexicon, grammar, color naming, lexical semantics, grammatical variation, cross-language color naming, the encoding of contextual relations in rules of grammar.
Research Profile
George P. Lakoff, Professor Emeritus. Mathematics, literature, philosophy, cognitive linguistics, the neural theory of language, conceptual systems, conceptual metaphor, syntax-semantics-pragmatics, the application of cognitive linguistics to politics.
Research Profile
Robin T. Lakoff, Professor Emeritus. Linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, comparative syntax of Latin and English, the relation between linguistic form, social and psychological context, language gender, discourse strategies, discourse genres, politics of language.
Research Profile
Ian Maddieson, Professor Emeritus. Linguistics, phonetic and phonological universals, articulatory and acoustic phonetics, African, Austronesian, South-East Asian and Sino-Tibetan languages.
Research Profile
+ James A. Matisoff, Professor Emeritus. Linguistics, Japanese, Southeast Asian languages, Tibeto-Burman, Thai, Chinese, field linguistics, Yiddish studies, historical semantics, psychosemantics, language typology, areal linguistics.
Research Profile
John J. Ohala, Professor Emeritus. Linguistics, experimental phonology, phonetics, historical phonology, ethological aspects of communication, speech technology, automatic recognition of speech, diverse behavioral phenomena.
Research Profile
William S-Y. Wang, Professor Emeritus. Evolution, psycholinguistics, language change, phonology, Chinese linguistics, language engineering, experimental phonetics.
Research Profile
Karl E. Zimmer, Professor Emeritus. Linguistics, history of linguistics, Turkish, word formation.
Research Profile
Contact Information
Department of Linguistics
1203 Dwinelle Hall
Phone: 510-642-2757
Department Chair
Keith Johnson
1222 Dwinelle Hall
Phone: 510-664-4087
Fax: 510-643-5688
Graduate Student Affairs Officer
Belén Flores
1207 Dwinelle Hall
Phone: 510-643-7224