About the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics (MMLL)
Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics is the home of language and linguistics teaching and research at the University of Cambridge. With more than 800 undergraduate students, approximately 140 MPhil students and 170 PhD students we are one of the largest humanities Faculties in the University and one of the largest languages Faculties nationally. Numbers of staff and students are approximate as numbers fluctuate.
The Faculty comprises of Sections/Departments, which cover a range of languages and subject areas, and is also home to Film and Screen Studies. The Faculty regularly tops a number of university and research rankings, and is home to a number of groundbreaking projects and initiatives.
The Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics:
The Department pursues an interdisciplinary approach to theoretical and applied linguistics and avoids uncritical adherence to particular views and theories. Building on the strengths of the previous institutions, the Department covers a comprehensive range of the language sciences and offers excellent theoretical and empirical research in a broad spread of fields from historical linguistics and comparative syntax to language processing and computational linguistics.
4 courses offered in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
Computation, Cognition and Language - PhD
The PhD in Computation, Cognition and Language is a doctoral track for students who conduct basic and applied research in the computational study of language, communication, and cognition in humans and machines. This research is interdisciplinary in nature and draws on methodologies and insights from a range of disciplines that are now critical for the further development of language sciences, including (but not limited to) Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Computer Science, Engineering, Psychology and Neuroscience. Irrespective of the discipline from which the applicant is progressing into the PhD in CCL, substantial background in linguistic theory is required.
Linguistics and Language Sciences (Research) - MPhil
The MPhil by Thesis is offered by the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics within the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics (MMLL) as a full-time or part-time research period. It is intended for students who already have a solid background in Linguistics, Language Sciences or Computational Linguistics, and have some research experience, and who already have advanced knowledge in the areas they wish to research for their thesis. The research topic should fall within the research profile of the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (see https://www.mmll.cam.ac.uk/dtal/research/researchclusters). Applicants should first contact a potential supervisor to check that their topic is appropriate.
The full-time course runs from October to June, with a submission date of early June.
It is also possible to take a part-time route. The expected timeframe would be 21 months, with a thesis submission date of early June in the second academic year of study.
Linguistics and Language Sciences (Taught) - MPhil
The MPhil by Advanced Study is offered by the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics within the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics (MMLL) as a full-time period of study and research, and introduces students to research skills and specialist knowledge in linguistics and the language sciences. The course is intended primarily for students who already have a good background in linguistics who wish to progress their study to a more advanced level, and/or extend their previous studies into the language sciences more generally.
Linguistics: Theoretical and Applied Linguistics - PhD
The Linguistics Department is unique in the UK because it integrates theoretical and applied linguistics in a single academic unit. The Linguistics Department provides great variety and flexibility in course contents, subject-specific training, and diversity of intellectual interactions. PhD topics in the range of research specialisms represented in the Department and beyond the Department in the MMLL Faculty are accepted. Students may choose to focus on a theoretically oriented study of the language sciences (e.g. interest in the syntactic organisation or sound structure of different languages or in the analysis of meaning in semantics and pragmatics) but may also be interested in a more applied direction of Linguistics (e.g. language acquisition, language processing, data mining of language corpora) or may choose to look at Linguistics from a specific language point of view (e.g., Italian linguistics).