Ph.D. students may concentrate their graduate work in any of the following areas: syntax, semantics, phonology, phonetics, diachronic linguistics, psycholinguistics, formal foundations of linguistic theory, and particular languages or language families. Doctoral training in the department is strongly oriented toward preparing students to carry on individual creative research as early as possible in their graduate careers. The graduate program is set up so as to maximize close student-faculty contact.

Ordinarily, applications to the Ph.D. program are accepted only for fall semester admission.

Note
The M.A. and Ph.D. programs are separate tracks with different admissions criteria. Applicants interested in obtaining a Ph.D. should not apply to the M.A. program. An M.A. is not required for admission to the Ph.D. program.