College of Humanities and Social Sciences

BA Linguistics

Understand how language is structured, particularly to what extent languages share a universal structural base and to what extent they differ from one another Understand how language is used, and the factors accounting for variation in language use Understand how language is learned by children in first language acquisition and by adults in second language acquisition Understand how language changes over time and the principles of historical linguistics

Demonstrate the ability to analyze problems, both linguistic and otherwise, and to find and critically evaluate alternative solutions

Demonstrate the ability to find in textbooks and research materials — paper and electronic — the kinds of information relevant to a given problem or issue, linguistic or otherwise, and to integrate that information into one’s own written work to support one’s argument while giving appropriate credit to the source of the information

Have a working knowledge of the subdisciplines of linguistics dealing with the organization of language, i.e., phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics Have a working knowledge of the subdisciplines of linguistics dealing with language use, change and acquisition, especially sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and psycholinguistics