About the Department

UT's Department of Linguistics is committed to teaching and research in linguistics, the scientific and humanistic study of human language. Our research examines form and meaning in a wide variety of the world's languages, including signed and spoken languages. We study language as part of the biological, cognitive, and cultural endowment of our species. We use computational techniques to probe the structure of human languages. We design experiments to understand how children learn language. And we describe and document highly-endangered languages, especially indigenous languages of the Americas.

In our undergraduate courses, we bring linguistics to a range of students, emphasizing our connection to such diverse areas as computer science, psychology, and philosophy; anthropology, education, and the foreign languages. At the graduate level, we have strengths in phonetics, phonology, syntax, and semantics--"core" fields that provide a foundation for the study of linguistic form and meaning--as well as in research areas that build on that foundation, including anthropological linguistics, psycho- and neuro-linguistics, computational linguistics, documentary linguistics, and the linguistics of signed languages. We take the view that training in all areas of linguistics requires a thorough grounding in the core. We also believe that research in the core is enhanced by building connections to broader research areas outside that core.

In recent years, we have expanded our offerings in computational linguistics, the documentation and description of the indigenous languages of Latin America, child language development, and the study of signed languages including American Sign Language. We are uniquely able to realize our vision of linguistics as a varied field that embraces many aspects of language.

The Department of Linguistics is located in Robert Patton Hall (RLP 4.304). For more information on our department, its people, programs and research, please browse this website, or contact us at:

Department of Linguistics

The University of Texas at Austin

305 E. 23rd Street STOP B5100

Austin, TX 78712

Voice: (512) 471-1701

Fax: (512) 471-4340