Engage students and faculty in linguistic theory and empirical research is a department priority.
We value theoretical advances as well as exploratory and hypothesis-driven empirical research on the nature of language, language use, and language acquisition. We believe that a solid understanding of linguistic theory and research is valuable not only to researchers but also to language learners and language teachers.
The department offers courses in several core areas of linguistic inquiry: phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and psycholinguistics.