Undergraduate program
Nature or nurture? Linguistics is a science that systematically addresses this puzzle, and its results in recent decades offer a uniquely interesting support for the answer: Both. Language is a social phenomenon, but all human languages share elaborate and specific structural properties. The conventions of speech communities arise, exhibit variation, and change within the strict confines of universal grammar, part of our biological endowment. Universal grammar is discovered through the careful study of the structures of individual languages, by cross-linguistic comparisons, and the investigation of the brain. In this way, linguistics mediates between cognitive science and social science.
The faculty and students in this Department of Linguistics study both the structural and the social aspects of language as well as their interaction. We specialize in phonetics/phonology (Davidson, Gafos, Gouskova), morphology (Marantz), syntax (Baltin, Collins, Kayne, Postal), semantics (Barker, Szabolcsi), and sociolinguistics (Blake, Guy, Singler), and branch out into historical (Costello), computational (Dougherty), and neurolinguistics (Pylkkänen). We have working relations with the departments of Anthropology, Philosophy, and Psychology.
We offer a linguistics major and a linguistics minor, as well as six joint interdisciplinary majors with the departments of Anthropology, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Psychology. These programs of study are outlined in the description of the College of Arts and Science Linguistics Program, which is part of the College of Arts and Science Bulletin. Many additional questions about our program are answered on the FAQ page.
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Dr. Maria Gouskova
Department of Linguistics
Office: 726 Broadway, 7th Floor, room 770
New York, NY 10003
linguistics.dugs@nyu.edu
Coordinator for the Language and Mind major
Dr. Adamantios Gafos
Coordinator for the Anthropology and Linguistics Major
Dr. John Singler
Last Modified: April 1, 2008