Department Overview

The UCLA Linguistics Department focuses on the scientific study of language in all aspects. The fields represented include phonetics, phonology, syntax, and semantics, as well as the interdisciplinary areas of psycholinguistics, language acquisition, historical linguistics, and mathematical linguistics. The department has a strong emphasis on linguistic theory as well as on fieldwork and experimental study. Three laboratories are housed in the department: the Phonetics Laboratory, the Language Processing Laboratory, and the Language Acquisition Laboratory.

About seven students per year are admitted to the department’s highly selective Ph.D. program. The department also offers a series of rigorous and comprehensive undergraduate majors, which provide numerous opportunities for undergraduates to participate in research. The department’s highly popular general education program teaches the key ideas of linguistics to thousands of UCLA undergraduates across campus every year.