PhD Requirements and timeline
Required courses (to be taken in Year 1)
Note: Students with insufficient background in certain areas (such as logic or statistics) may be required to take certain undergraduate courses (e.g. PHIL 210 or PSYC 305) in addition to required graduate courses.
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LING 631 Phonology 3
LING 660 Semantics 3
LING 671 Syntax 3
LING 619 Experimental Foundations (to be taken in Year 1 or Year 2)
9 additional credits from one of the following streams:
| Theory Stream LING 635 Phonology 4 LING 665 Semantics 4 LING 675 Syntax 4 |
Experimental Stream 6 credits from the following:
LING 665 Semantics 4 LING 675 Syntax 4 3 credits in statistics (to be taken in
Year 1 or 2)
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Complementary courses (normally taken in Year 2)
3 credits from the following:
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LING 520 Sociolinguistics 2
LING 521 Dialectology
LING 555 Language Acquisition 2
LING 590 Lang. Acquisition & Breakdown
LING 650 Testing Theories in the Lab
LING 651 Topics in Acquis of Phonology
LING 655 Theory of L2 Acquisition
LING 690 Seminar in Neurolinguistics
LING 720 Advanced Seminar in Socioling
LING 755 Adv Sem: Language Acquisition
LING 790 Adv. Sem. In Neurolinguistics
6 additional credits at the 500, 600, or 700 level, at least one in the student's intended research area. (Students intending to specialize in semantics must take LING 661 Advanced Formal Methods .)
PhD Evaluation (Years 2 and 3)
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LING 701 Ph.D Research Seminar 1 (to be taken in Fall of Year 2)
LING 702 Ph.D Research Seminar 2 (to be taken in Winter of Year 2)
LING 706 Ph.D. Evaluation 1 (Winter of Year 2)
LING 707 Ph.D. Evaluation 2 (Fall of Year 3)
The PhD Evaluation consists of two parts - Evaluation 1 (LING 706) and Evaluation 2 (LING 707) - each focusing on a different sub-field, chosen from the following: morphology, phonology, semantics, syntax, acquisition, neurolinguistics, processing, sociolinguistics. For each Evaluation, candidates will prepare a paper, which presents original research, suitable for presentation at a conference and/or for publication.2 Successful completion of Evaluations 1 and 2 is a prerequisite to further supervised research for the doctoral dissertation.
Timeline and deadlines
| Year 1 | Courses only |
| Year 2 | Sept 15: Constitution of committee for Evaluation 1 April 15: Submission of Evaluation 1 May 15: Constitution of committee for Evaluation 2 |
| Year 3 | Dec 15: Submission of Evaluation 2 Two months after completion of Evaluation 2: Constitution of dissertation committee Five months after completion of Evaluation 2: Submission of dissertation proposal |
| Year 4 | Thesis research and writing |
| Year 5 | Thesis research and writing |
Failure to meet an Evaluation paper submission deadline may result in a failure for the Evaluation.
We strongly encourage candidates to complete the PhD within 4 or 5 years. Absolute deadline: PhD theses must be deposited no later than the end of PhD7.
Language Acquisition Program (LAP) Option
PhD students in the interdisciplinary PhD Language Acquisition Program Option must meet the above requirements (and some additional ones). For information, see http://ego.psych.mcgill.ca/lap.html/