If You Have an M.A. from Elsewhere

Our graduate program is a Ph.D. program; however, on the way to your Ph.D. you are required to have an M.A. thesis or equivalent paper. You are also required to take some of the M.A. level courses and have equivalents of others.

If you already have an M.A. Thesis

If you already have written an M.A. thesis at another university you have the option of submitting that to the department to satisfy our M.A. thesis requirement. The thesis will be evaluated by a committee with expertise in the relevant area who will (a) accept the thesis as is, (b) require you to do minor or major revisions, or (c) not accept the thesis as satisfying our requirements. Alternatively, you can simply decide to produce a new M.A. level paper (related or unrelated to the first). In recent years most students who come with an M.A. choose to write a new M.A. paper, but there are some who go the first route. This is something you should discuss with the Director of Graduate Studies by the end of your first year in the program.

Please note that if you already have an M.A. in Linguistics from another institution, UCLA regulations do not permit you to receive a UCLA Linguistics M.A. en route to your Ph.D.: the only degrees you will receive here are the Candidate in Philosophy (given when you have completed all requirements except the dissertation) and the Ph.D. For this reason, should you choose to write an M.A.-level piece of research, it is referred to as your “M.A. paper”, not your “M.A. thesis.”

Course Requirements

Even if you already have an M.A. and do not intend to get a second one here, you must take the 5 phonology, syntax, and semantics courses (200A, 200B, 200C; two of 201A, 201B, 201C) required for our M.A. (no exceptions, no matter what or how many courses you’ve already had elsewhere), and you must take, or have taken the equivalent of the other required course and the 3 elective courses. The department (usually the first year student adviser, sometimes in consultation with relevant faculty) decides what is “equivalent.”