Master in Linguistic Theory and Language Description
HSE University
Key Information
Campus location
Moscow, Russia
Languages
English
Study format
On-Campus
Duration
2 years
Pace
Full time
Tuition fees
RUB 390,000 / per year *
Application deadline
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Earliest start date
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* 195 000 – 390 000 RUB/year
Scholarships
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Introduction
The Master’s program in Linguistic Theory and Language Description trains students in methods of linguistic analysis and the interdisciplinary study of language and language documentation. With a focus on sociolinguistics and typologically informed language description, students gain hands-on linguistic research experience.
The program is taught by members of HSE’s School of Linguistics in Moscow, which conducts a wide range of research activities, including fieldwork with minority languages, field anthropology, typology, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and Russian sign language. Some of these activities are pursued in cooperation with the Laboratory of Language Convergence and the Center for Language and Brain. It is one of the few master’s programs in theoretical linguistics that includes a strong interdisciplinary perspective, including acoustic phonetics and variationist sociolinguistics.
Program Overview
The program is hosted by the School of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities. Our program is one of the few MA programs in theoretical linguistics that includes a strong interdisciplinary component and explains its relation to linguistics and language description: such as acoustic phonetics, sociolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology.
Our academic and research activities include:
- Introduction of our students to language diversity and to field studies of minority languages and dialects;
- Studies of language variation and change;
- Studies of Russian grammar and lexicon, as well as Russian Sign Language, in a typological perspective;
- Introduction to the basics of the formal language modeling;
- Discussions about language, field research, and linguistic experiment from the interdisciplinary point of view – teaching psycholinguistics and linguistic anthropology;
- Work with electronic corpora of different languages, as well as building them;
- Teaching methods of linguistic data processing, statistic analysis, and visualization, in R and Python;
- Basics of instrumental phonetic analysis;
- Help with conceiving and carrying out one’s own linguistic project.
The program has research partnerships with the University of Tromsø, University of Helsinki, University of Stockholm, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of Pavia. Every year we organize guest lectures by linguistics from Europe and the US (see here and here). Or see a less formal advertisement of the program.
Several reasons why you will enjoy staying with us:
- We tell you about what we do ourselves...
- And if we tell you about anything else, it is interesting to ourselves.
- You will carry out your own research projects – becoming part of modern linguistics yourselves.
- We go on linguistic field trips, and the best of you may join us.
- We are joyful and relatively young (as of 2017).
- Also, the School of Linguistics celebrates, goes to the open air, etc.
Admissions
Curriculum
Curriculum
- Introduction to programming
- Cognitive and functional linguistics: an introduction
- Linguistic data analysis: quantitative methods and visualization
- Preprocessing and analyzing linguistic data in Python
- Explanatory models in social sciences
- Laboratory phonetics
- Theoretical models in language description
- Historical linguistics
- Experimental linguistics
- Introduction to the grammar of a lesser known language
- Linguistic anthropology
- Russian studies (1 and 2)
- Sociolinguistics (1 and 2)
- Typology (1 and 2)
Career Opportunities
Career Opportunities
The program is essentially an academic MA designed for people who plan a further career in fundamental/academic research and teaching. Successful graduates might want to consider PhD positions, in Russia or abroad, as well as teaching theoretical linguistics at leading universities. Applied and interdisciplinary experience includes neurolinguistic research, Russian studies, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology.
Who is a linguist researcher?
The field of linguistic studies is broad and deep. To give just a few examples, it includes experimental or field or corpus studies - or, very often, a combination thereof. In Russia, important and internationally renowned academic centers are the Institute of Linguistics, Institute of Russian Language, Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow, Institute of Linguistic Research. Fundamental linguistics are supported by various Russian foundations including the Russian Science Foundation, the Russian Humanities Foundation, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, international foundations for research on and documentation of minority languages on the verge of extinction.