Master’s programme 'Linguistic Theory and Language Description'
The Linguistic Theory and Language Description Master’s programme trains students in methods of linguistic analysis and the interdisciplinary study of language and language documentation. The focus is on Russian linguistics, sociolinguistics, and typologically-informed language description. Students gain hands-on experience through field projects especially – but not exclusively – in Russia. The programme is taught by members of HSE’s Faculty of Linguistics, which leads research on Russian sign language and cooperates with the Laboratory of Neurolinguistics, the Laboratory of the Languages of the Caucasus, and the recently created Laboratory of Language Convergence.
Programme Overview
The programme is hosted by the School of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities. Our programme is one of the few MA programmes in theoretical linguistics that includes a strong interdisciplinary component and explains its relation to linguistics and language description: such as acoustic phonetics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology.
Our academic and research activities include:
- introduction our students to language diversity and to field studies of minority languages and dialects
- studies of language variation and change
- studies of Russian grammar and lexicon, as well as Russian Sign Language, in a typological perspective
- introduction to the basics of the formal language modeling
- discussions about language, field research and linguistic experiment from the interdisciplinary point of view – teaching psycholinguistics and linguistic anthropology
- work with electronic corpora of different languages, as well as building them
- teaching methods of linguistic data processing, statistic analysis and visualization, in R and Python
- basics of instrumental phonetic analysis
- help with conceiving and carrying out one’s own linguistic project
Prerequisites: BA/Major (exceptionally, a strong minor) in linguistics or (exceptionally) in humanities. Exceptions could be granted based on interviews with the applicant – please, plan in advance.
Requirements:
- Academic research portfolio: BA / MA thesis, research projects, conference and school participation, publications.
- International applicants take part in a Skype interview with the representative of the program. During the interview, the topics to be discussed is their background in theoretical linguistics, possibly including basic notions of linguistic theory in e.g. phonetics, morphology, syntax, language classification etc. They also describe their academic experience (if applicable), e.g. participation in research projects, presentations at conferences, fieldwork etc. There is no formal examination in terms of a set of questions or tasks. Essentially, the applicant needs to justify her eligibility for the program.
- A letter of intention: a vigorous explanation why you want to enter our program and what you expect of us
- English sufficient at least for academic communication (B1):
- TOEFL and IELTS and other international certificates are accepted, otherwise an oral interview (including by Skype)
- Russian: no prerequisites
For more information please click "Further Official Information" below.
This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:
https://www.hse.ru/en/ma/tling