Students completing the AB or ScB concentration in Linguistics can expect to achieve the following learning objectives:
- Learn basic concepts in linguistics that are necessary to describe human languages and theorize about them: how sound is organized in language, how sounds and gestures combine to form meaningful units, and how language is used for communication
- Acquire an appreciation of the different kinds of variation in human languages: what is common to different languages, how languages can differ from one another, and how speech communities and individuals vary in their use of language
- Become familiar with a wide variety of topics in linguistics, including psycholinguistics, language change, language and society, computational approaches to language, and philosophy of language
- Acquire hands-on experience in understanding and solving open-ended questions in linguistics, which would include comparing the merits of competing theoretical approaches
- Learn how to communicate linguistic arguments effectively in writing and in presentations