Linguistics at California State University at Northridge

Linguistics studies human language, seeking to define its nature, to establish its relationship to human thought, to discover what distinguishes human language from other forms of communication (human and nonhuman), to understand how children develop a language and acquire additional ones, to understand the ways in which languages may differ from one another and to describe how human beings use language in context to engage in all the other “human” activities.

Graduates of the M.A. in Linguistics will:

• Demonstrate a solid knowledge of linguistic theory in the areas of phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, language acquisition and sociolinguistics.
• Demonstrate specialized knowledge in at least three major subfields of linguistics.
• Describe the relevance of linguistics to a range of professional settings and to general issues at large.
• Read, analyze and critically evaluate linguistic research, demonstrating a high level of critical thinking and problem solving about linguistic issues.
• Demonstrate the ability to conduct original research or apply current linguistic theories to new sets of data, analyze data and draw appropriate conclusions.