The Department understands that undergraduates are interested in linguistics for a variety of reasons. The Department has kept all of these considerations in mind in designing its course offerings and concentration requirements. The courses offered by the Department of Linguistics reflect the extraordinary diversity of the field. As a result, the undergraduate program focuses on theoretical linguistics and historical linguistics. This concentration is complemented nicely by offerings in psycholinguistics in the Department of Psychology, logic in the Department of Philosophy, and the rich set of language offerings in our various language departments.
Every normal child learns a language somewhere between the ages of one and five.
Modern linguistic theory seeks to characterize this knowledge explicitly, and to account for the fact that human beings acquire it so quickly, and with seemingly little effort. The bulk of the knowledge that enables us to speak and use language is unconscious. For this reason most people are unaware of its almost unbelievable complexity and richness. Nor is it obvious to the casual observer that the linguistic knowledge of speakers of languages that appear to be very different superficially is structured by universal principles. Since humans alone possess language, the study of language provides an important window to the understanding of the human mind.