Bachelor of Arts [B.A] [Linguistics] From Reed College

• Phonetics—The study of speech sounds (or, in sign languages, gestures), their acoustic and physiological properties, and how they are classified and described.
• Phonology—How speech sounds/gestures are organized into systems, and how they interact with each other when combined to form larger units such as syllables, words, and phrases.
• Morphology—The internal structure of words, their categories and formal properties, and how they are related to other words in the speaker’s “mental lexicon”.
• Syntax—The rules or principles governing how words are combined to form phrases and sentences.
• Semantics—How words (and parts of words) are associated with meanings, and how the meanings of phrases and sentences are computed based on the meanings of their parts.
• Pragmatics—How speakers employ language to perform communicative tasks (making assertions, asking questions, issuing commands, etc.).
• Discourse—The linguistic study of ‘texts’ (stories, conversations, etc.) and of issues related to narrative structure, style, genre, etc.

With its focus on language as a unique facet of human nature, linguistics bridges the divide between the cognitive sciences, social sciences, humanities, mathematics, logic, and philosophy. Linguistic concepts have also contributed to the understanding of style and rhetoric, genre and register, poetic meter, trope, and metaphor, thereby enhancing our appreciation of literature. The techniques of linguistic analysis provide a window into the ideas of other cultures, distant in space and time or close to home, and thus contribute to the study of history, anthropology, and sociology. Linguistic semantics has contributed to our understanding of the relationship of logic to language and have influenced (and been influenced by) research in philosophy and mathematics. Finally, discoveries in linguistics have made major contributions to the development of cognitive science, and have applications in fields as diverse as neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and computer science, and artificial intelligence research.