Linguistics
Linguistics
All majors are required to take:
All classes applied to Group A–C requirements must be taken for a letter grade, and you must get a C− or better to apply it to your Linguistics major. If you take a course pass/fail you cannot apply it to Linguistics, even if the professor swears you would have got a C−.
Majors are also required to take at least two classes in a language or languages other than English, or demonstrate competency equivalent to the successful completion of one year of study at the college level. Exceptions can be made for students desiring to pursue more extensive coursework needed for cross-disciplinary fields such as psycholinguistics or computational linguistics.
Primary majors must complete a capstone project. This will normally be done while taking Ling 495 (Senior Seminar), 499 (Study for Honors), or 500 (Independent Work).
| Ling 170D Introduction to Linguistics |
| Ling 309 Syntactic Analysis |
| Ling 313 Phonological Analysis |
| Ling 317 Introduction to Computational Linguistics |
| Ling 311 Introduction to Semantics |
| Ling 312 Phonetics |
| Ling 320 Historical Linguistics |
| Psych 358 Language Acquisition |
| Psych 433 Psychology of Language |
| Phil 306G Philosophy of Language |
On a semester-by-semester basis, other courses may be included in Group C. Normally this is done only for occasional seminars and topics courses. Students requiring other courses to support a specific line of linguistics study or research may petition to have such courses counted as a Group C course.
It is often useful for the developing scholar to study at other universities. But it must be kept in mind that graduation with a Washington University Linguistics major means that you have satisfactorily completed a course of linguistics study at Washington University. The College imposes general limits on how much work you may apply from other universities, which the Linguistics Program implements as follows:
Courses taken for the foreign language requirement stand outside these restrictions and may be freely taken at other institutions.
In addition, well documented experience at another university may occasionally be taken into account if you petition to replace a Group A requirement with another class. For example, if you can prove you have a strong knowledge of Syntax, you may, at the Program’s discretion, be permitted to take some other class instead of Ling 309.
If you are planning to study abroad, our best advice is that you do so during the summer after your sophomore year and look upon that primarily as a way of gaining experience with a foreign language. If you wish to apply summer or junior-year-abroad classes toward Group A–C requirements, you should work this out in advance with your Linguistics advisor and the Overseas Study Office. It is up to you to show that the class in question covers the appropriate material at the right level. You may also need to demonstrate how many classroom hours there are; as a rule of thumb, about 14 hours of classroom corresponds to 1 unit at Wash U.
If you wish to fulfill a Linguistics major, you may in addition have up to two minors, or one minor and another major. If you choose to have two majors, you will need to decide whether Linguistics is your primary or your secondary major. The differences are small. If you are a primary Linguistics major, the College will consider your Linguistics advisor to be your main Major advisor, with the responsibility of authorizing your registration each semester. Also, you will be expected to do a capstone experience in Linguistics in your senior year. Students who wish to write a senior honors thesis do so in their primary major.
Whether your Linguistics Major is primary or secondary, it must include 18 units of classes that fulfill these requirements:
Some planning and cooperation between departments will be necessary to make sure that the double counting fulfills all the rules. Be advised that just because Linguistics would let you double-count a course toward a Sudoku major does not mean that the Sudoku department has to let you do that.
The Linguistics GPA is computed across all courses that you apply to your Linguistics major under Groups A, B, or C. This includes:
The Linguistics GPA does not include any of the following:
These exclusions are inflexible. For example, we cannot count a grade from another university even if you show us a transcript from that university, or even if it is part of a study abroad program sanctioned by Wash U.
Repeated classes (retakes) are strongly discouraged. You may apply such a repeated class to your Linguistics major only with advance permission of the Linguistics program.
Normally independent study classes such as Ling 500 or Ling 499 are taken for 3 units, like the majority of other classes. If your senior capstone consists entirely of Ling 500, it should be 3 units. You are expected to put in about 125 hours of work for a 3-unit class. Independent study should result in substantial, assessable output, typically a research paper or a poster that you present at a conference or research fair. If you sign up for 3 units but do less work, your grade will be lowered substantially. If you will be doing a smaller project, consider signing up for 2 or even 1 unit. Only in very exceptional circumstances should an independent study be more than 3 units an hour. The absolute upper limit is that you may not take more than 6 units of independent study in any one semester, nor more than 18 units in toto across your undergraduate career; these limits include all your independent studies, not just Linguistics.
For information about declaring a major in linguistics, contact Brett Hyde or Brett Kessler.