Graduate

The MA - PhD Program

The MA/PhD program is a new combined program designed for students entering with a BA with the intention of earning a PhD. The program consists of core coursework, requirements for specific Areas of Concentration (ARCO), preliminary exams, comprehensive exams, and dissertation work. The ARCOs available are:

Applied Linguistics
Hispanic Linguistics
Sociolinguistics

If none of the above ARCOs are chosen, then the student will be in the General and Descriptive Linguistics Program.

Course Requirements

Other Requirements

Required Core Courses for the MA/PhD:

The following courses are required of all students in the MA/PhD program. Students entering with an MA degree from another institution may petition to have coursework taken for that MA degree apply to the PhD degree at Pitt. See also the Preliminary exam requirement.

Courses required to be taken in the first year:

2578 Phonetics (Fall)
2579 Phonology (Spring)
2773 Morphology (Fall)
2777 Syntax (Spring)
2144 Research Methods (Fall)

Required courses that can be taken any time:

One course in socio/language change

2267 Sociolinguistics
2680 Historical Linguistics
2253 Language Contact

Choose one advanced level core course approved by the student's advisor. Some example courses fulfilling this requirement:

2580 Advanced Phonology
277X Advanced Morphology
277X Advanced Syntax

Applied Linguistics PhD Requirements

2146 SLA

Language pedagogy course

Either LING 2945 Psycholinguistics or a course in First Language Development

A seminar in Applied Linguistics (2147, 2149)

Statistics for Research in Linguistics

General and Descriptive Linguistics PhD Requirements

Field Methods

One Advanced Core Course in Phonology, Morphology or Syntax (whichever was not taken in core)

3000-level Advanced seminar in Phonology, Morphology or Syntax

Historical Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, or Language Contact (whichever not taken in core)

Linguistic Typology

Hispanic Linguistics PhD Requirements

Courses

2392 History of Spanish

Spanish Sociolinguistics or 2394 Spanish Dialectology

Other requirements

Entrance requirement: Advanced Low Proficiency in Spanish as measured by an OPI or equivalent.

In core courses, students are encouraged to work on topics in Hispanic linguistics and to use Spanish sources.


All theses and long papers must have a significant Hispanic element, and a significant number of sources in Spanish.

Students may wish to focus on Applied Spanish Linguistics or Spanish Sociolinguistics, but these are not official ARCOs. The following are suggested courses:

Applied Spanish Linguistics:

Education of Linguistic Minorities
Second Language Acquisition
Approaches and Methods of TESOL
Techniques and Procedures of TESOL

Spanish Sociolinguistics:

Education of Linguistic Minorities
Language Contact
Discourse Analysis
Variation Analysis

Sociolinguistics PhD Requirements

Sociolinguistics (if not already taken)

Field Methods

SOC 2101: Sociological Theory 1 – Classical

SOC 2102: Sociological Theory 1 – Postclassical

Statistics for Research in Linguistics

Two of the following:

Discourse Analysis

Language Contact

Sociology of Language

Variation Analysis

Other MA/PhD Requirements

Language requirement :

  1. Reading proficiency in two languages other than English is required. Oral proficiency in one language other than English is also required (the language fulfilling the oral requirement may be the same as one of those fulfilling the reading requirement). This requirement is satisfied by examination.
  2. Students whose native language is not English and who complete their core courses with a grade of B+ or better will be considered to have completed the oral and reading requirements for one language. Such students will still need to demonstrate reading proficiency in another language.
  3. If a student speaks two languages natively and one of these is English, the student need only demonstrate proficiency in one further language.
  4. In addition to the basic foreign language requirement in (1), the department requires one term of study with a grade of B or better in a language that is not Germanic, Greek, Italic (Romance, including Latin), or Slavic. If a student studies such a language for one of the other language requirements, no extra language need be taken. For applied linguists, however, this requirement must be fulfilled by classroom study. This requirement cannot be  fulfilled by Field Methods.
  5. Example 1: A student may pass an exam reading Spanish, and then take two years of Vietnamese to allow her/him to pass a reading and oral proficiency exam. In this case all language requirements have been fulfilled.
  6. Example 2: A native Spanish-speaking student passes all core courses with an A grade. She/he then takes one semester of Japanese. This student has fulfilled the language requirement.

Thesis : A thesis is required to progress to the PhD program.

See http://www.linguistics.pitt.edu/graduate/ma/ma-research-req.htm for details. A long paper may not be substituted for a thesis for students in the MA/PhD program.

Preliminary exam: The preliminary exam is fulfilled by completing the master’s thesis, and passing the final exam of all core courses with a B+ grade or better. With respect to the thesis, the student is considered to have passed the preliminary exam if the thesis committee recommends the student for doctoral study.
Students entering with an MA degree may petition to have core courses waived. In order to waive phonetics, phonology, morphology or syntax, a student must demonstrate knowledge by providing course syllabi and passing an oral interview. In order to fulfill the thesis requirement when entering with an MA, a student must have written a thesis for the previous MA; in addition, the student must defend the previous thesis in their first year at Pitt. Students are advised to have the MA thesis approved by the faculty – and set up a defense committee and date – as soon as possible after they begin PhD study. If a student’s MA did not require a thesis, then during the first year of PhD study the student must revise a course paper in accordance with departmental MA thesis guidelines, and defend that paper before the end of the year, in order to pass the preliminary exam (in addition to the core course requirement).

Comprehensive exam : A comprehensive examination precedes admission to candidacy and dissertation research. To fulfill this requirement, the student must write two papers of publishable quality on substantially different topics, evaluated by and defended before a committee of at least 3 faculty. The student must present one (1) of these papers in a department colloquium. A maximum of 18 comprehensive credits may be taken.

Dissertation proposal : When the student has successfully completed the PhD comprehensive examination, she or he must prepare a dissertation proposal and present it in a formal dissertation proposal defense. A four-person doctoral committee will direct the dissertation and administer the required proposal defense after the proposal has been submitted. The student chooses the chair of the doctoral committee, and together they select the remaining committee members, subject to the approval of the department chair. One of the committee members must be from outside the core faculty of the Department of Linguistics.
A dissertation proposal must have at least two elements: a knowledge essay and a proposal. The dissertation advisor will determine exactly the format for these two elements. For example, the advisor may require the first few literature review chapters of the dissertation for the knowledge essay portion, and then require a student to provide a proposal based on those chapters. Alternately, the advisor may construct a series of questions about the topic that a student must satisfactorily answer (in written essay form) in addition to providing a proposal. Upon approval of the proposal, the student will be admitted to candidacy for the PhD. Up to nine credits of dissertation study credits may count toward the total required number of credits.

Dissertation:

The student must prepare and submit a dissertation that is a contribution to linguistic knowledge. A four-person doctoral committee will direct the dissertation and administer the required oral defense after the dissertation has been submitted (see the Arts & Sciences Graduate Bulletin – http://www.umc.pitt.edu/bulletins/graduate/FASinfo.htm – for regulations governing the dissertation committee and defense). The dissertation defense is open to all members of the University community, and all graduate faculty members who attend have the right to pose questions to the candidate.

Sample progression through MA/PhD program (milestones)

Year 1

Core courses

Year 2

Core courses and electives

Complete thesis

Year 3

Elective courses

Defend comprehensive 1

Present comprehensive paper in colloquium (can wait until year 4)

Year 4

Defend comprehensive 2

Present comprehensive paper in colloquium (if not done in year 3)

Dissertation proposal defense

Year 5

Dissertation research or fieldwork,
Possibly defend dissertation

Year 6

Defend and submit dissertation

Evaluation of Students

For progression from MA to PhD in MA/PhD program: At the end of their first year, a written evaluation is presented to all faculty that assesses the student’s work in courses and TA assignments. If unsatisfactory, students are put on notice that they will only be permitted to continue through the next year (i.e. 2nd year). The faculty may also elect to warn the student that unless their performance improves in the next semester, they will only be permitted to finish their MA. A final continuation evaluation will be based on the thesis defense.
For students entering with an MA, the first year is probationary. Students must complete the year with a GPA of 3.5, and their performance will be reviewed in the spring semester.

For funding: All currently-funded students, current students without funding, and newly admitted students are evaluated at the funding meeting each January.