Humanities and Social Sciences

School of Communication, Arts and Critical Enquiry

Linguistics Program

What is Linguistics?

Linguistics, the scientific study of language structure, production, and use, is a recognized research strength of La Trobe University. There are 32 regular academic staff, including seven chair professors, plus a large number of post-doctoral fellows and honorary associates, whose field of research is linguistics. They are distributed in four administrative units within the University, and each unit has its own areas of specialization: the Linguistics Program of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science (linguistic typology, sociolinguistics, experimental phonetics, and the languages of Asia, particularly Sino-Tibetan languages); the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology (RCLT; linguistic typology and the languages of the Amazon and Papua New Guinea); the School of Human Communication in the Faculty of Health Sciences (development of speech and language in children; speech pathology; acoustic, auditory-perceptual and physiological features of operatic singing voice), and the Faculty of Education (applied linguistics and language education).one of the leading centres in Australia for teaching and research on human language.

Teaching

Within the Linguistics Program, the staff specialize in discourse analysis, historical linguistics, lexicography, linguistic typology, morpho-syntax, experimental phonetics, phonology, semantics, and sociolinguistics.

Linguistics is currently only available to students at the Melbourne (Bundoora) campus. The Program offers degrees at both undergraduate (including Honours) and postgraduate (MA and PhD) levels.

Research

There is a particularly strong concentration of expertise in Sino-Tibetan (especially Tibeto-Burman) linguistics. The Program has a strong record of attracting external funding. It maintains a high rate of publication and the staff are prominent at international conferences.

The Program's continued emphasis on good teaching is reflected in undergraduate enrolments over the last few years. In addition there are a dozen students completing honours or postgraduate studies.

This site is designed to help you become acquainted with the Linguistics Program and the staff who teach it. You will find outlines of the wide range of subjects that are on offer with the view to helping you make appropriate subject choices within your particular program of study, as well as information about the discipline of Linguistics for prospective students. Students are also strongly encouraged to visit members of staff if they have any queries about individual subjects or about your own particular degree structure or career possibilities.

For the other units involved in linguistics, please follow the links on the right.

News and Events

Linguistics Program Seminar Series

Linguistics Workshops

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