Language Requirements

Linguistics PhD students must complete study or a project on a natural language other than their native language.

You must choose a language that is:

  1. A spoken or signed natural language that is not your native language.
    Example: English can be used if it is not your native language.
  2. (General Track) Not necessarily typologically distinct from your native language, although that is preferred.
    Example: A native English speaker could potentially use another Indo-European language, such as Spanish.
  3. (Computational Track) Typologically distinct from your native language.
    Example: A native English speaker must use a non-Indo-European language, such as Japanese.
  4. Approved by your supervisory committee.

Your method of fulfillment must be:

  1. Approved by your supervisory committee before you begin the project or study.
  2. Approved by your supervisory committee after you finish the project or study.
  3. Fulfilled before you sit for your general exam.

Methods of fulfillment include:

  • 2 semesters or 3 quarters of college-level study.
  • Experience teaching a language at the University of Washington.
  • A major research project with significant primary data collection and structural analysis, resulting in a general paper (GP) or other major paper.

Examples of significant primary data collection include:

  • Fieldwork with native speakers.
  • Annotation of a large, unannotated corpus to build a grammar.
  • Coding and analyzing some aspect of linguistic variation on an originally-recorded corpus.
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