The Linguistics Department's primary areas of interest lie strongly in grammatical theory, which can be broken down roughly into syntax , phonology , and semantics . Individual faculty members also specialize in phonetics , sociolinguistics , and second language acquisition theory . Other faculty interests include research into the history of linguistics as an academic discipline, mathematical linguistics, and language typology. Languages of faculty research include Spanish, French, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Jamaican Creole, Arabic, Siswati, Sandawe, Cherokee, Swahili, Austronesian languages of Taiwan, the Athabaskan languages, and Sahaptin.
Information is also available about the interests of individual faculty members .
In addition, the department often collaborates with other departments such as Speech and Hearing Sciences, Anthropology, Philosophy, Psychology, and Computer Science to expand its course offerings. Syntax Several faculty members in the Department work in the area of syntactic theory. All such research takes place within the generative tradition, which, broadly characterized, sees grammars as formal cognitive systems. In addition to syntax per se, UW linguists have made many contributions to the understanding of the interface between syntax and other levels of grammar, in particular phonology, morphology, semantics, and discourse. Phonology The Department's phonologists concern themselves with aspects of modern generative phonology.