Qualifying Exams

Linguistics Ph.D.

Qualifying exam: The qualifying examination is in two distinct areas, one primary, the other secondary, to be decided in consultation with your advisory committee. Qualifying exam I requires you to develop five research proposals—three in the primary area, two in the secondary. Qualifying exam II requires development of a research paper.

African Linguistics Ph.D.

Qualifying exam: As with the Linguistics Ph.D., the qualifying exam for African Linguistics is in two distinct areas, one primary, the other secondary, to be decided in consultation with your advisory committee. The first qualifying exam requires you to develop five research proposals—three in the primary area, two in the secondary. Qualifying exam II requires the development of a research paper.

Research proposal: After nomination to candidacy, you will select a research committee composed of no fewer than three members of the Department of Linguistics faculty and an outside representative. This committee must approve the proposed dissertation topic.

Computational Linguistics

Qualifying exam: The qualifying exam is comprehensive, covering two distinct areas of computational linguistics and/or linguistics. At least one of the qualifying examinations must entail a practical software artifact. The artifact may be a program, a computational grammar, an implemented scheme for corpus annotation, or some other approved artifact. The other examination may take the form of a written paper (of publishable quality) or a written exam. The specific focus and scheduling of the examination is determined by your advisory committee.