Disciplines and areas of study
Linguistics
Enquiries: (03) 9479 2338
The Linguistics Program is one of the leading centres in Australia for teaching and research on language. The staff include internationally recognised researchers on Australian English, typology, discourse, historical linguistics, languages of East and South East Asia, semantics, sociolinguistics, syntax, and articulatory and acoustic phonetics.
The staff have a strong record of attracting external funding, maintain a high rate of publication, and are well represented at international conferences.
La Trobe also hosts the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology (RCLT), which specialises in the documentation of endangered languages and in the exploration of the general properties of human language.
The Program has about 20 Honours and postgraduate students, which creates a stimulating and supportive milieu. A supervisor is provided for each student on the basis of area of expertise and expressed preferences. Students and supervisors are required to maintain regular contact, meeting at least once a fortnight.
Students are advised to audit units relevant to their area of interest, and must attend research seminars given by fellow students, staff and visiting scholars.
The Program regularly attracts leading academics from overseas to speak in the research seminar series, and frequently invites distinguished scholars for extended visits. The RCLT normally has long-term visitors, and students are given the opportunity to meet with all of these visiting academics. The seminar program is supplemented by a postgraduate seminar series and informal seminars organised by the students themselves. There are, in particular, special interest groups for discourse studies and for Sino-Tibetan linguistics, which hold their own meetings and seminars.
Principal areas of specialisation
Principal areas of specialisation are bilingualism, cross-cultural pragmatics, description of previously unrecorded or inadequately recorded languages, discourse, language change, language shift, language obsolescence, phonetics, phonology, semantics, sociolinguistics, syntax – especially functional and typological approaches to the languages of Burma, China, Thailand and Papua New Guinea, as well as European languages including English in all its varieties.
The Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy are examined by thesis alone, but students may be required to take some courses as co-requisites.
Coursework programs
- Graduate Diploma in Humanities and Social Sciences
- Graduate Certificate in Humanities and Social Sciences
Research programs
- Master of Arts by Research
- Doctor of Philosophy