Linguistics and English Language
Academic staff: 15
Research postgraduates: 26
The Linguistics and English Language discipline is committed to extending and deepening the understanding of natural languages by fostering an environment favourable to empirical research on all aspects of linguistic theory.
Since we believe that it is important to work from a solid empirical base, we particularly encourage fieldwork by staff and students.
This has led to 91直播's current leading role in the study of endangered languages internationally.
Members of staff are committed to an understanding of the nature of human languages based on serious theoretical reflection and regularly conduct research in:
- Historical Linguistics
- Phonetics
- Phonology
- Morphology
- Semantics
- Syntax
We believe that a thriving discipline will offer a range of theoretical perspectives. Consistent with this view, we both teach and conduct research in theories as diverse as:
- Construction Grammar
- Lexical-Functional Grammar
- Optimality Theory
- Minimalism
Members of the discipline have published significant studies in each of these theories, as well as in descriptive linguistics.
Among the excellent resources available are a phonetics laboratory with facilities for:
- Signal analysis
- Speech synthesis
- Laryngography
- Electropalatography
The discipline also possesses a large and diverse collection of linguistic corpora and tools for computational linguistic analysis.