Linguistics, BA

The Linguistics Program is intended to acquaint students with the methods and findings of the scientific study of human language and its relationships to cognition, society, and history. It serves as a preparation for graduate training in linguistics or related areas, and as part of a rigorous general education. Linguistic training is relevant to work in anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and language and literature, as well as to careers in such fields as education, computer science, and law. Founded by Zellig Harris in 1947, the Penn Linguistics Department is the oldest modern linguistics department in the United States. We have outstanding programs in the core disciplines of syntax and phonology, as well as in sociolinguistics, semantics, discourse, historical linguistics, phonetics, and psycholinguistics. Penn is also the home of the Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC), a compiler and distributor of linguistic materials for language engineering research. The graduate group in Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania is an interdisciplinary team of faculty from the Department of Linguistics and related departments. Our program has strong concentrations in several areas and a tradition of collaboration among its faculty.