Linguistics
The Graduate Center’s Linguistics program draws on the resources of New York City and of its great public university to help students develop expertise in the one of world’s most exciting fields.
Contact UsDegree Offered
Ph.D. in Linguistics
M.A. in General Linguistics
M.A. in Computational Linguistics
Admissions Deadlines
December 5 (Fall Enrollment only)
Linguistics at the CUNY Graduate Center
Our Ph.D. and M.A. programs ready students for opportunities in academia, private industry, public service, and more.
We offer coursework, laboratory experience, and research supervision in theoretical, experimental, descriptive, and applied linguistics. Our students master the discipline of linguistics in its broadest sense, acquire knowledge of a specialized area, and carry out independent research.
Specializations
Computational Linguistics lies at the intersection of linguistics and computer science. The field focuses on how computers and algorithms can be used to model the sounds, grammar, and meaning of human language. Professionals and researchers in computational linguistics apply computational and statistical techniques to linguistic data, in order to answer challenging questions in linguistics research and to build useful computer software and websites that intelligently process information in the form of human language.
According to UNESCO, "It is estimated that, if nothing is done, half of the 6000 plus languages spoken today will disappear by the end of this century." Linguistics students and faculty who specialize in Endangered Languages are actively engaged in documenting and supporting the cultural wealth and ancestral knowledge embedded in these languages.
Language Acquisition is a broad field, with topics including first language acquisition, second language acquisition, bilingualism, and multilingualism, examining both children and adults.
Phonology is a central area of research and study in the Linguistics program. Students are encouraged to describe understudied sound patterns, explore theoretical implications of common and uncommon sound patterns, understand sound patterns in terms of their phonetic bases and historical developments, and design experiments to better understand the nature of phonological knowledge and its relationship to morphology, syntax and semantics.
Semantics is an active and growing area of the Graduate Center's Linguistics Program. Recent dissertations have investigated Chinese wh-indeterminates (Chen), Korean Negative Polarity Items (Lee-Sikka), English amount superlatives (Wilson), Korean topic and case markers (Chung), de se/de re interpretations of Icelandic pronouns (Reeves), Japanese quantifiers (Kobuchi-Philip), English indexicals (Bevington). On-going research by students is on topics as varied as implicature acquisition, subjunctive conditionals, semantic T(ense)-A(spect)-M(odality) interactions, the semantics of imperatives, and the syntax/semantics of predication.
Sociolinguistics studies the place of language in society, investigating the connections that hold between language and social categories such as class, gender, and ethnicity, as well as the connections between variable features and their conditioning contexts within the language. Students and faculty have used sociolinguistic techniques to investigate such topics as creolization, urban language varieties, dialect contact in urban settings, and bilingual contact phenomena.
Syntax at the Graduate Center is highly interdisciplinary and collaborative. Syntax faculty and students are closely involved with research conducted in a number of related areas within the Linguistics Program: semantics, first and second language acquisition, sentence processing, sociolinguistics, field linguistics, and language documentation, to name a few. Syntactic research at The Graduate Center covers a broad range of languages and topics. The program produces empirically rich and theoretically significant research across a wide variety of empirical and analytical domains, preparing students for careers in both academia and industry.
Upcoming Events
Program Highlights
Focus on Research
Students engage in research projects that interest them with guidance from chosen faculty advisers, who are recognized experts in their fields. Students also have the opportunity to participate in research laboratories and institutes including the Computational Lab, the CSI-CUNY Speech Laboratory, the Second Language Acquisition Lab, the Speech Lab, the Speech Production Laboratory, the Speech Acoustic and Perception Laboratory, the Research Institute for the Study of Language in Urban Society, and the Endangered Language Initiative.
Explore Research Labs and Initiatives
Program Highlights
Interdisciplinary Study
Interdisciplinary work is common among our students and faculty. Many faculty and students complement their linguistics teaching and study with work in anthropology, computer science, language studies, speech and hearing science, and urban education. The Graduate Center is also a member of the Interuniversity Doctoral Consortium, which allows matriculated Graduate Center doctoral students to pursue related study at other members institutions, including Columbia University and NYU.
Interuniversity Doctoral Consortium
Program Highlights
Exploring Linguistics in NYC
New York City is one of the most linguistically diverse places on earth. Our program encourages students to focus their research on the under-described and threatened languages within the city as well as beyond it. Students can also take advantage of New York’s rich resources for research and academic exploration, from the New York Public Library to the wide variety of archives and collections across the city.
Recent News
More Like ThisAnnouncement
Prof. Miki Makihara organized a symposium titled "Discourse and the Construction of Political Subjectivities: Perspectives on Lebanon, Chile, Rapa Nui, Morocco, Puerto Rico, and Mexico", February 3, 2023, at the Graduate Center.
Speakers:
Diane Riskedahl (Anthropology, Graduate Center)
Tania Avilés (Universidad Católica de Temuco, Chile)
Mata-U'iroa Atan (Rapa Nui, Easter Island)
Becky Schulthies (Anthropology, Rutgers)
Carmín Quijano (LAILaC, Graduate Center)
Closing: Oswaldo Zavala (LAILaC, Graduate Center)
Moderated by Miki Makihara (Queens College & Graduate Center)
The event is co-sponsored by the Ph.D. Program in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures, and the Ph.D. Program in Anthropology, and in collaboration with the M.A. Program in Middle Eastern Studies. RSVP: https://bit.ly/3IQREbf
- Announcement
Nishtha Trivedi
Nishtha Trivedi will be presenting her poster titled, Autistic and Neurotypical speakers mark given-new information structure with systematic, perceptible prosodic focus, at Meeting on Language in Autism in Durham, NC, March 9-11,2023.
- Congratulations/Kudos
Announcement
Prof. Kyle Gorman will be teaching a class entitled "Defectivity" at the Linguistic Society of America's 2003 summer institute, to be held at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst this June and July.
See details here:
https://blogs.umass.edu/lingstitute2023/
https://blogs.umass.edu/lingstitute2023/courses/defectivity/
- Announcement
Congratulations to Professor Bill Haddican
Prof. Bill Haddican's article "Cross-speaker covariation across six vocalic changes in New York City English," is the recipient of the Roger W. Shuy Award for the best article published in American Speech during 2022. Bill will receive the award at the American Dialect Society's Annual luncheon on Saturday, January 7.
The article examines differences in the way that innovative variants for six vocalic changes in New York City English—TOO-fronting, raising of PRICE and FACE and lowering of BAD, THOUGHT and DRESS—co-occur across speakers, and explores social correlates of these patterns of covariation in the Corpus of New York City English (Tortora et al in progress). The analysis suggests that patterns of covariation across speakers are conditioned by the local social embedding of the changes.
- Congratulations/Kudos
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Cecelia Cutler
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