| Master's Degree
Requirements
Students must complete LING 410, 420, 421, 422, 615, 645 (or their equivalents), and at least one 700-level seminar.
The department offers the MA Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C programs. In addition to the University-wide residence requirement of a minimum of two semesters of full-time work, all three programs require that students demonstrate competence in one language other than their native language.
Plan A requires a thesis (12 credit hours) and a minimum of 18 credit hours of course work. A final oral examination covering the thesis and related areas is also required.
Plan B requires a minimum of 30 credit hours and a final seminar presentation near the end of the course work. The topic and format of the seminar must be approved in advance by the graduate chair.
Plan C requires a final examination with both written and oral portions. Plan C is open to selected students with some previous work in linguistics who show both high potential for scholarly development and the motivation and discipline necessary for an independent course of study. A committee of faculty is appointed for each prospective student for Plan C. The committee administers a general examination during the student's first semester of study to determine the appropriateness of Plan C, advises the student in developing a program of study, and administers the final examination.
Doctoral Degree
Requirements
Students in the PhD program are required to complete a minimum of 33 credit hours of course and seminar work at the University of Hawai'i (exclusive of LING 800) beyond those counted toward their MA degrees (or, for students not holding an MA, beyond those specified for the MA as above). Courses in field methods (LING 630), phonology (LING 621), and grammar (LING 622) are required of all PhD students.
PhD students must pass a preliminary examination, a comprehensive examination, and a final oral examination in defense of the dissertation. The preliminary examination is normally taken at a point soon after the completion of the core of courses required for the MA. It consists of two parts, the first of which is a written examination. Students are encouraged to form their PhD program committees in consultation with the graduate chair as soon as possible after they have completed this part. The second part of the PhD preliminary examination is fulfilled by having a paper written by the student accepted for dissemination in the departmental Working Papers series or published in an acceptable form elsewhere. Both parts of the preliminary examination are waived for those students receiving the MA under Plan A who also have their theses accepted for publication in an outlet agreed to beforehand by the linguistics faculty. Students hoping to have their theses published under this latter provision are required, before submitting their theses for publication, to identify the publication outlet (or sequence of outlets) to which they plan to submit their theses and, for each outlet, to provide as much background information as possible, including the names of the editorial board, stated review policies, a list of recently published titles, and other relevant bibliographic information. The faculty will review the proposed outlets and indicate which, if any, it finds acceptable.
The preliminary examination is offered once each semester, in August and January. The exam consists of four sections: general linguistics, historical-comparative linguistics, phonology, and grammar-syntax. Students must take all four sections when they first take the exam. They are given the advantage of averaging among the four to achieve an average pass. Students who do not pass all four sections need retake only those sections they did not pass; their best scores on each section will be averaged to achieve an average pass. This examination must be passed within two attempts.
Students must also demonstrate competence in two languages other than their native language. One of the languages must be in the "research tool" category.
A "research-tool language" should be one of the major languages of the world in which there is ample published material on linguistic topics: Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, or Spanish. Students should demonstrate their ability to read linguistic materials in one of these languages. They will be expected to take the usual reading/translation test in the chosen language. (Foreign students may use English if it is not their native language, and they will be considered as having satisfied this requirement when the English Language Institute certifies them as exempt from taking any further ELI courses.)
If a student can demonstrate that another language would be an appropriate language as his or her research-tool, that language may be approved by the chair of the graduate field as a "research-tool language" for that student. For example, Dutch may be an appropriate "research tool language" for a student who is working with Dutch materials dealing with the languages of Indonesia.
The other language may be any language, including any of the designated research languages. It may also be American Sign Language or any other language for which a qualified examiner can be found in Hawai'i. The additional language is required of doctoral candidates in linguistics to encourage some increased breadth of language background beyond that provided by the research-tool requirement and as such does not include the same reading/translation requirement. Accordingly, students may satisfy the second language requirement by demonstrating a certain degree of speaking proficiency and knowledge of the structure of the language. Passing a fourth semester foreign language course (e.g., Japanese 202) with a grade of B or better will be deemed sufficient to satisfy this requirement. Alternatively, students may take a placement test to demonstrate that they have the equivalent of four semesters of the language.
Students are admitted to candidacy after demonstrating competence in both languages and performing successfully on the comprehensive examination.
The comprehensive examination is both written and oral. Students are expected to demonstrate expertise in three areas of specialization chosen from among the following: phonological theory, syntactic theory, phonetics, semantics, morphology, language in its social and cultural context, pragmatics, psycholinguistics,
neurolinguistics, discourse analysis, computational linguistics, language acquisition, language learning and teaching, language planning, multilingualism, pidgin and creole studies, translation, typology and universals, lexicography, or the linguistics of any of the following areal or genetic groupings:
Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Chinese, English, Indo-European, Japanese, Korean, Sino-Tibetan, or Tai. Related disciplines may also be designated as areas of specialization. These particulars are determined when a student's doctoral committee is formed, after the preliminary examination has been passed.
To gain approval of dissertation topics, students are expected to develop detailed written proposals and defend them successfully in oral examinations conducted by their committees. In addition to traditional dissertation topics of a theoretical, descriptive, or historical nature, the faculty is open to topics in applied linguistics, when it can be demonstrated that the project will add to the knowledge of language, broadly conceived. Research may include studies of language use in education, law, or other institutions of society; social and cultural influences on language acquisition and use; bilingualism, multilingualism, foreign accent, and translation; the interrelations of language and literacy; etc. Although many such topics can also be treated within disciplines such as anthropology, psychology, literature, and pedagogy, when presented for the PhD in linguistics they are expected to have a linguistic perspective and to make a distinctive linguistic contribution. The decision as to whether such expectations are met is here, as elsewhere, made by the student's dissertation committee. Committees for applied topics will include members drawn from the faculties of closely related and cooperating fields of study such as Asian languages and literatures, English, English as a second language, and European languages and literature. Students wishing to explore such areas are encouraged to include relevant courses beyond those required for the MA as electives early in their program. |
