The following goals and learning outcomes have been established for students pursuing a degree in Linguistics:

  • Understand how language is structured, particularly to what extent languages share a universal structural base and to what extent they differ from one another.
  • Understand how language is used, and the factors accounting for variation in language use.
  • Understand how language is learned by children in first language acquisition and by adults in second language acquisition.
  • Understand how language changes over time and the principles of historical linguistics.