Linguistics at Florida International University offers a master's and a certificate program with courses taught through the departments of English and Modern Languages. FIU is an excellent place to study linguistics, since it is located in the veritable language laboratory of South Florida. Miami is the gateway city to Latin American and the Caribbean. Roughly half the population of the county speaks Spanish as a first language; almost half a million people speak Haitian creole; and thousands speak other creole languages including Jamaican, Bahamian, Trinidadian, Papiamentu, and Sranan. South Floridians also speak French Canadian, Yiddish, Portuguese, Mikasuki (an indigenous American language), and Russian. Miami's unique linguistic situation contributes to an academic environment in which the study of the nature of language becomes relevant on a daily basis.

The FIU Linguistics Program is the home of The Carrier Pidgin, an international newsletter in creole studies, edited by Professor Tometro Hopkins.  FIU also organizes and hosts the biennial International Creole Language Workshop.

The M.A. in Linguistics is based on a strong core of courses in the traditional areas of linguistics (phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and historical) with an additional emphasis on creole studies, language acquisition, sociolinguistics, English linguistics, and Romance linguistics.
 

ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS

- BA degree in Linguistics or related field
-Undergraduate GPA of 3.0
-Two letters of reference from undergraduate/graduate professors
-Statement of purpose (indicate if interested in an assistantship)
-TOEFL score of 600 (non-native speakers of English).
 

Application form can be downloaded directly from the Graduate Admissions web page. Application and transcripts should be sent to the Office of Admissions .
Letters of reference, Statement of Purpose, a copy of the application, and Test scores should be sent to the director of the Linguistics Program. 

Dates :

Fall Admission: March 1

Spring Admission: October 1
 

FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE

Limited financial assistance is available through the Linguistics Program. Several graduate assistantships are offered each year on a competitive basis. These assistantships cover the cost of tuition and provide a stipend for living expenses. Interested students must take the GRE and submit their scores along with letters of reference, statement of purpose, and a copy of the application to the director of the program by March 1 of the preceding academic year to be considered for these awards.

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REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE

The Master of Arts in Linguistics requires 36 graduate hours in linguistics, distributed as follows:
 

The remaining 15 credit hours must be selected from other linguistics graduate course offerings. In addition to the courses listed above, courses in pragmatics, language acquisition, pidgins and creoles, sociolinguistics, Romance linguistics, and applied linguistics are offered regularly.  (See course descriptions.)  Students may also take LIN 5701 (Psychology of Language), which is offered by the Psychology Department.  For any other courses outside the program, the students are  asked to take the permission of the program director.

Towards the end of their course work, students are required to take written comprehensive exams in phonetics, phonology, syntax, and semantics.  Students who write a thesis and have a GPA of 3.7 or above are exempt from the examination requirement.
 
 

Students may elect to follow a thesis or a non-thesis option. Those electing to write a thesis will take up to six credit hours in thesis research as part of their required 36 hours. When completed, the thesis will be defended orally before a committee made up of three faculty members, including the thesis director. Those electing to follow the non-thesis option will take all 36 hours in non-thesis courses.

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COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

For descriptions of the graduate courses in linguistics, click on the FIU Graduate Catalog.
 

COURSE SCHEDULES

For the course schedule for the current/upcoming semester, please click here.

LINGUISTICS 4+1 PROGRAM

with

 the Accelerated Master's Program in Linguistics!

Click on the file below to learn more about our exciting new program!

- 4+1 Flier (PDF version)     

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The Linguistics Program also offers a Certificate in Linguistics. Students majoring in another field and non-degree seeking students holding any bachelor's degree may participate in this program. Certificate students are required to take 18 credit hours in linguistics including an introductory course and course in syntax. Both graduate and undergraduate students are eligible for the certificate.  Please click here for more information.

FIU's  International Creole Language Workshop Series provides a forum for creolists to come together with teachers, school administrators, language planners, and university faculty from all over the world. These workshops address the many issues surrounding creole language use in an urban setting with particular emphasis on creole languages in the educational system.

The Creole Language Workshops were begun in 1994 and are now held biennially. The Fifth International Creole Language Workshop was held at the Florida International University, Biscayne Bay Campus, in March 30-April 1, 2000.  The theme was How the past can improve the future: creole languages in the new millennium.   You can still access the web site for this workshop at Creole Language Workshop web site.

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Henry Truby Prize for Graduate Students

Established in memory of the late Henry M. Truby by his family and friends, this award honors the top graduate student in the FIU Linguistics Program each year.    In order to qualify for consideration, a student must be officially enrolled in and currently attending courses in the FIU graduate program in linguistics and must have completed at least 15 credits toward the MA degree. See Truby Award page.

Barbara Gordon Memorial Lecture Series 

Each year, the Linguistics Program and the Barbara Gordon Memorial Endowment bring a major figure in the discipline to campus for an public lecture and a special workshop for linguistics faculty and graduate students.  These events are made possible through the generosity of former Florida State Senator Jack Gordon. Past Barbara Gordon lecturers have included Derek Bickerton, Melissa Bowerman, Susanna Cumming, Susan Curtiss, Michel DeGraff, Charles Ferguson, Joshua Fishman, Susan Gass, Ian Hancock, Mark Johnson, Philip Lieberman, Suzanne Romaine, Susan Steele, Loreto Todd, Peter Trudgill, and Salikoko S. Mufwene.

'Bilingualism' was the topic of the four consecutive lectures. In 2001, François Grosjean spoke on the cognitive dimensions of late and early bilinguals, the 2002 lecture by Loraine Obler examined the neurolinguistic aspects of bilingualism, in 2003, the lecture by Lesley Milroy approached the topic from a sociolinguistic perspective, and the 2004 the lecture by Fred Genesee examined the simultaneous bilingualism. For more information, click on the Barbara Gordon Lecture web page. 

Linguistics Colloquium Series

The Linguistics Program also sponsors an on-going colloquium series in which Linguistics faculty, faculty in related disciplines, and graduate students present their research in progress. The colloquium series brings together FIU faculty and students from various disciplines and linguists from other institutions in South Florida.
See Colloquia page.

Jean-Robert Cadely, Assistant Professor (Ph.D., Universite du Quebec a Montreal)
Haitian Creole  

Tometro Hopkins, Associate Professor (Ph.D., Indiana University)
Pidgins and Creoles, Sociolinguistics, Anthropological Linguistics

John B. Jensen, Professor (Ph.D., Harvard University) Webpage
Applied Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics

Peter Machonis, Associate Professor (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University)
French Linguistics

Ana Roca, Professor (D.A., University of Miami)
Spanish in the U.S., Problems in Language Learning, Language Planning

Ellen Thompson,  Assistant Professor (Ph.D., University of Maryland)
Syntactic Theory, Syntax/Semantics Interface, Language Acquisition. Webpage.

Feryal Yavas, Lecturer and Director (Ph.D., University of Kansas)
Pragmatics, Language Acquisition

Mehmet Yavas, Professor (Ph.D., University of Kansas) Webpage
Phonetics, Phonology, Phonological Development and Disorders
 

FACULTY IN RELATED DISCIPLINES

Ana Gouvêa, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
(Ph.D., University of Maryland) Psycholinguistics

Bennett Schwartz, Associate Professor, Psychology Department (Ph.D., Dartmouth )
Cognitive Psychology, Meta-cognition, Memory

Eliane Ramos, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
(Ph.D., University of Massachusetts) Speech-Language Pathology

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Send written inquiries to:  Feryal Yavas, Director
                                       Linguistics Program

                                       11200 SW 8th Street, DM 453
                                       Florida International University
                                       Miami, Florida 33199

Ideographs from Maria Sten (1978). Codices of Mexico. (Mexico: Ediciones Lara, S. A.)

Contact Garamis Campusano:  gcamp003@fiu.edu

Revised 11/27/2009 01:06:08 PM -0500