
An Evolving Linguistics Curriculum
Our graduate curriculum has grown tremendously in the last few years and has recently been reviewed and refined to align with emerging research, student needs, and best practices in linguistic pedagogy. Our evolving curriculum gives graduate students a stronger foundation and greater flexibility to shape their academic path. With clearer course sequences and more robust requirements, students gain the depth needed to conduct advanced research across multiple subfields.
Fall 2025
New PhD Course Requirements
We've reevaluated the PhD course requirements to ensure our students are developing a reasonably substantial breadth and depth in our program. PhD students must take at least eight foundational courses and four elective courses, including at least one seminar or equivalent research-oriented course, for a total of twelve core courses, or 48 credit hours. The new course requirements can be found on the PhD program page and in the updated PhD Handbook.
Who Does This Impact?
These new course requirements apply to all PhD students admitted in Fall 2025 and onward. While PhD students in previous cohorts are not bound by the new course requirements, they are highly encouraged to take as many of these courses as they're able to. It's in every student's best interest to take advantage of the breadth and depth of this new curriculum.
Recent Curriculum Updates
- A new PhD handbook is now available to view on the PhD Resources page. It incorporates all the program updates that were made in the 2024-2025 academic year.
- We've reevaluated the PhD course requirements to ensure our students are devloping a reasonably substantial breadth and depth in our program. These new course requirements apply to all PhD students admitted in Fall 2025 and onward.
- The department is excited to introduce newly structured course sequences in syntax, sound, and morphology, which involved renaming existing courses, as well as creating a range of new courses that will begin being offered in Fall 2025. A few of these new courses include: Statistical Methods in Linguistics, Languages of Africa, Phonetics, Phonology, Topics in Sociolinguistics, and Prosody.
- We’ve clarified our policy on testing out of foundational courses—highlighting that exceptions are rare and must be earned through demonstrated, substantial expertise. Students testing out of a course must still complete an equivalent or more advanced course in that subfield to satisfy the foundational requirement. Additionally, PhD candidacy now follows the successful defense of the second qualifying paper.
2025-2026
Linguistics Course Catalog
For a full and updated list of linguistics courses, reference our most recent course catalog for the 2025-2026 academic year.
While we try to maintain a consistent course offering pattern, due to faculty leaves, enrollment numbers, and curricular changes, we can't always accomodate this. Use the links below to check out the courses that are currently beging offered and our course offering history.
Featured Courses - Spring 2026
Check out some of our featured courses for the upcoming Spring 2026 semester. For a full and updated list of Linguistics courses, explore our course catalog.

LING 107 Language and Landscape: Water is Life
Water is on track to be the most pressing environmental issue in the upcoming decades. But beyond its physical substance, what is water? How do we understand its value in our lives? Who controls it? This course will focus on the language and landscape of water, its geography and physical presence...
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LING 110 Intro to Linguistic Analysis
This course introduces students to the study of the structure of human language. We will cover the six core areas of linguistic investigation: Phonetics (articulation, acoustics, and perception of speech sounds), Phonology (sound patterns), Morphology (internal structure of words...
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LING 228/428 Lexical Semantics
In this course we investigate the study of word-meaning in current linguistics and cognitive science. We examine the meanings of lexical items such as verbs, nouns, adjectives, and prepositions, and also other categories of words, including various function words and discourse particles. We examine...
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Get in Touch
For more information about the Department of Linguistics, our programs, our research, or our courses, send us an email.