Welcome to the graduate program page of the Linguistics Department at Rice University. If you are considering applying to our department, we hope this page will be a useful resource in helping with your application decision, and will give you a sense of what to expect from our program. If you are already a graduate student here, we hope this page will serve as a central location for keeping track of progress toward your degree, and for answering commonly-asked questions.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need more specific information or have additional questions about the program. For general administrative issues, contact Rita Riley, the Department Coordinator, at ling. For questions about graduate requirements and policies, contact Dr. Robert Englebretson, the department graduate advisor, at reng. For anything related to this web site or to suggest additional links or content, contact Dr. Suzanne Kemmer at kemmer. And of course, you are always welcome to get in touch with individual faculty members or graduate students about our courses, research, or language areas.

If you plan to make a visit to Rice, please contact the specific faculty members you would like to speak to so that you can plan your visit to match their times and dates of availability. Please be aware that many faculty members travel frequently to conferences, especially during summers and university holidays, and one or more faculty members may be on sabbatical at a given time. So be sure to check on their availability before setting your travel plans.
 

The doctoral program in Linguistics at Rice emphasizes the study of language use and functional/cognitive approaches to linguistic theory. Rice faculty engage in a broad range of research specializations, all of which play an important role for in-depth graduate training. These interrelated areas include: cognitive linguistics, language change, sociolinguistics, discourse studies, language documentation and description, phonetics, laboratory phonology, and language universals and typology. Other specific faculty research interests include phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic theory, acoustic phonetics, speech sciences and technology, language revitalization, neurolinguistics, forensic linguistics, applied linguistics, and second language acquisition. As a graduate student in the department, you will receive broad training in functional and cognitive approaches to language. You will have opportunities to work with faculty members in their specific areas of research, and you will pursue your own work on projects of interest to you. The department emphasizes the development of theory from empirical language data (of many kinds), and expects graduate students to focus on primary data as well -- through fieldwork, lab research, corpus-based research, and other empirical approaches.

The graduate program in Linguistics seeks excellent students whose interests are related to the existing strengths of the department. We also value diversity among students, as this enhances the intellectual and interpersonal climate of the program. Current doctoral students are researching a variety of topics, and come from numerous countries and language backgrounds. We presently have students from the U.S., Germany, Israel, Japan, Peru, Korea, Mexico, Taiwan, Australia, and Hungary. See the graduate students list to find out more about our graduate students and their interests. (We also frequently have visiting international graduate students in residence, who add to the social and intellectual diversity of the graduate student community.)

The Linguistics graduate program only admits students planning to study for the Ph.D. degree on a full-time basis. We do not admit students to work solely on an M.A., we do not admit part-time students, and we do not admit students to begin study in the spring semester. We accept students who have a B.A. (or equivalent), as well as students with advanced degrees in Linguistics (M.A. or equivalent). If you are applying as a student with a B.A., your preparation should ideally include language study, course work in Linguistics, and/or classes in related disciplines (such as anthropology, applied linguistics, speech and hearing sciences, psychology, sociology, or particular languages). A Master's degree may be earned during progress to the Ph.D. degree.

On December 1, 2008, competition will open for academic year 2009-2010 admissions and fellowships for the Rice University Ph.D. program in Linguistics. Please apply on-line by filling out the online graduate application form. The deadline for applications for admission and financial aid is February 1, 2009, for the academic year beginning in August 2009.

In addition to the online application form, you are also required to submit university transcripts, scores from the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), and, for non-native speakers of English, scores for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). It is your responsibility to take these examinations in time for the scores to reach us by the application deadline. This generally means that you will need to take these exams by December of the year preceding application at the latest. You must also arrange for three letters of recommendation from relevant faculty at your current or prior institutions who know your work. It is best to solicit letters from professors with whom you have studied linguistics, but letters from faculty in related disciplines are also useful. In addition, in order to get more acquainted with you, your writing abilities, and your academic interests, it is helpful for the admissions committee to see a writing sample; if possible, please include in your application materials a Linguistics article or term paper that you have written. The deadline for all application materials is February 1 of the calendar year you wish to begin studies.

If you have questions about how to apply, or cannot use the online form, e-mail Rita Riley, the department coordinator at ling. If you need to contact the department by mail or phone, see the contact information on the department home page. For general questions about graduate study at Rice, visit Rice's Graduate Admissions page.

Admission and financial awards are competitive. The department generally admits only four or five students per year to the Ph.D. program. If you are accepted, you will receive an official statement of acceptance and fellowship offer.

Rice University is committed to affirmative action and equal opportunity in education and employment. Rice does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, age, disability or veteran status.

Students admitted to the Ph.D. program in Linguistics are generally offered financial support in the form of a full fellowship. This fellowship includes tuition waivers and a stipend for living expenses. Contingent on satisfactory progress toward the degree, it is expected that a doctoral fellowship will be renewed annually to the number of years specified in your offer letter or until you finish the degree, whichever comes first.

If after some years of study you anticipate that you will need to continue working on your degree past the time when your fellowship will expire, you will need to apply outside the department for grant funding or other sources of financial aid, or rely on your own financial resources to finish your degree. Recent students have successfully received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance, and the Rice Vaughan Fellowship award program. (For some grants which are awarded on a competitive basis, the student must be nominated by the department.) For information about other sources of financial aid such as student loans and grants, visit the Rice Office of Student Financial Services.

Our program is demanding, and in order to excel in it, you need to devote full time to your graduate studies. Although the dollar amounts of the stipends are by no means extravagant, they are designed so that you should be able to devote yourself full time to your graduate school duties without taking on outside employment. The cost of living in Houston is not high compared to that of other major cities, and the current low dollar exchange rate may make the sum appear smaller than its actual purchasing power.

If you do find that you need to supplement your stipend, however, you must get approval from the department chair, the graduate advisor, and the Rice Office of Graduate Studies before accepting employment. As explained on p. 72 of the Rice General Announcements: "Students receiving stipends from fellowships or assistantships may not accept any regular paid employment on or off campus without the explicit permission of the department. Full-time students, whether receiving stipend support or not, may not accept paid employment in excess of 20 hours per week." The Department of Linguistics considers more than 10 hours of paid employment to be a potential infringement on full-time study, and you must be aware that accepting such employment may detract from your progress in the degree program.

In addition to the regular graduate fellowships, for the past several years the department has also been able to offer summer research funding. This funding has allowed graduate students to undertake a variety of projects during the summer when classes are not in session: to conduct fieldwork, to work on publishable papers and/or the dissertation prospectus, and to give talks at international conferences. Summer research funding is competitive, and we generally seek proposals early in the Spring Semester. Your proposal needs to be approved by your faculty mentor (or the graduate advisor) as well as the department chair. If you receive summer research funding, the department asks that you submit a report at the end of the summer to briefly explain the results of your research. Failure to submit this end-of-summer report may negatively affect your consideration for future summer funding. While summer research funding is not guaranteed, we anticipate that it will remain a regular part of the department for the foreseeable future.

During the week before classes begin in Fall Semester (generally in late August), both the university and the Linguistics Department hold orientation sessions for newly-admitted graduate students. If you are a new student, it is important that you attend these meetings. Please be sure to keep Rita Riley, the department coordinator, at ling, informed about your summer e-mail address and contact information, so that she can let you know of the dates and times of these events. In addition to the university and department orientation sessions, you should also meet during this week with the graduate advisor, Dr. Robert Englebretson, at reng, to plan your course of study for the semester.

For an overview of department requirements, be sure to thoroughly read the requirements section of this web page, as well as the relevant sections of the Rice General Announcements for the year in which you enter the program. You should also familiarize yourself with Rice University Policy Memorandum 501-01, as well as the policies section of the Office of Research and Graduate Studies web page. For everything else that you could possibly want to know about graduate study at Rice, check out the Rice Office of Research and Graduate Studies homepage, which contains numerous important links, including: the Graduate Student News, information on funding, Student Life links, graduate admissions information, university policies and guidelines, and information for international students. And, finally, if you are looking for relevant and interesting summer reading before you start the program, you can't go wrong with any of the books listed on the department's Recommended Reading List in Linguistics.

One of the strengths of our department is the close working relationship enjoyed between graduate students and faculty members. We wish to foster this relationship by ensuring that you have appropriate advising and mentorship throughout your program. It is crucial that as many faculty members as possible are familiar with your work; not only does this allow for in-depth letters of recommendation when you are ready for the job market, but it also ensures that your work benefits from the feedback of people with different perspectives and expertise in all areas of linguistics. Whenever you choose a committee, please fill out the relevant form available from the department coordinator, Rita Riley at ling and also give a copy to the graduate advisor. During the first year, you will work closely with the department graduate advisor to choose a plan of study congruent with department requirements and your own interests. By the end of the first year, you will select a faculty mentor to provide more personalized advising in addition to the general advice of the graduate advisor. For each of your two publishable papers, you will form a committee of three faculty members to advise you on your work. Each paper committee will usually consist of your faculty mentor plus two other faculty members from within the Linguistics department. After your second publishable paper, you will then choose a final committee to advise you on your dissertation prospectus, to administer your qualifying exam for advancement to candidacy, and to supervise the writing and filing of the dissertation itself. This final committee is known as your 'dissertation committee'; its chair is known as your 'advisor' or 'committee chair'. Your dissertation committee must include three (or more) tenured or tenure-track members of the Rice faculty; one member of your dissertation committee must be external to Linguistics (i.e. from another department at Rice).

The graduate advisor serves as a resource for you at every stage in the program. Before you register for classes in your first semester, you will consult with the graduate advisor to discuss which linguistics classes you have taken, what your interests are, which classes best meet your needs, and what types of options are available for you. You should continue to consult with the graduate advisor throughout the semester, to discuss your progress, obtain advice, and address any other relevant issues. The graduate advisor maintains files for each of the graduate students, containing information such as students' forms, curriculum vitae, student publishable papers, other pertinent paperwork, and the record of course reports. Currently, the graduate advisor is Dr. Robert Englebretson. You may reach him by e-mail at reng.

In each of your subsequent semesters, you will continue to meet with the graduate advisor to obtain signed approval for your course schedule. Even after choosing a faculty mentor, you should continue to consult with the graduate advisor regarding departmental requirements, your progress, and for other issues and advice. Additionally, the graduate advisor will need to approve your fulfillment of the language requirements, publishable-paper requirements, and oral presentation requirements.

Faculty Mentor

By the end of your first year of graduate study in Linguistics, you will choose a faculty mentor who will guide the next phase of your progress in the Ph.D. program. The faculty mentor is a tenured or tenure-track member of the Linguistics faculty at Rice who works closely with you on your specific areas of interest, and also helps you focus your work towards the dissertation. Your faculty mentor gives you advice on courses, publishable papers, submission of abstracts to conferences and papers for publication, and other professional activities. Usually the Faculty Mentor you choose is the faculty member with whom you want to work most closely on research topics. Your faculty mentor may ultimately also be your dissertation adviser, but this is not always the case. Sometimes, as your specific research areas develop, you may find that it is in your best interests to change faculty mentors. If this happens, you should discuss your situation with the graduate advisor, your current mentor, and the faculty member whom you wish to become your new mentor. Also remember that while you will have a faculty mentor from the end of your first year onwards, you still need to meet each semester with the graduate advisor to discuss your course registration and progress toward the degree. This cooperation between faculty mentor and graduate advisor ensures that you will remain aware of departmental requirements and your progress in fulfilling them.

The remainder of this page presents in detail each of the departmental requirements for the Ph.D. in Linguistics. In addition to the departmental requirements discussed here, there are a few requirements defined by Rice University for all graduate students. For more information see university graduate requirements. The departmental requirements discussed on this page are in effect beginning academic year 2006-2007. When preparing for graduation, you should be aware that you are in most cases bound by the requirements listed in the General Announcements for the year in which you entered the program; however, if the requirements change in the course of your program, you do have the option of choosing the new set of requirements. It should be noted that the option of switching requirements can only be taken one time in the course of your program: you may not revert back to an earlier set of requirements once you've switched, nor may you choose from a later set of requirements should the department change them again.

The faculty recognizes that each graduate student is entering the department with a unique educational and language background, a specific set of professional interests, and various plans and goals for work after graduate school. For this reason, we encourage you to discuss these issues with the graduate advisor, department chair, and/or your committee so that we may accommodate your particular situation as much as possible.

In addition to the official requirements listed here, the faculty also expects you to form strong supplementary reading habits, regularly perusing current journal articles and the many other materials dealing with linguistic theory and practice that our library collection has to offer. As early as possible after your arrival on campus, you should familiarize yourself thoroughly with the linguistics holdings in Fondren Library, including the area where the volumes of current journals are displayed before being sent out for binding. The university and the department are also well equipped with networked computers connected to the Internet which are available for student use. You should expect to learn to make use of the research materials available through the Internet in addition to the books and journals physically located in our holdings in the departmental and university libraries. Faculty members and fellow grad students are an excellent resource for information on finding and obtaining library and online materials.

In order to succeed in graduate school here at Rice, it is important that you have excellent oral and written English language skills. If your first language is not English, the department will provide you with help in perfecting your spoken and written English as necessary. You may thus be required to spend part of your first year completing formal ESL courses, so that you are ready to keep up with the demands of a rigorous curriculum that requires a great deal of reading and writing as well as effective listening and speaking skills.

As a graduate student in Linguistics, you are required to register for at least 12 units of courses each semester before advancement to candidacy. The following list outlines the courses you are required to take during your first three years in the program. This range of courses ensures that you will receive a rigorous and broad background in linguistics, which will prepare you for your own research projects and will make you highly-qualified for the job market. We generally expect course requirements to take 2-3 years, depending on your prior background. This ensures that you will fulfill Rice's residency requirement of four semesters of full-time study at the university, as well as Rice's minimum course-hour requirements. (See the university graduate requirements for more information on Rice's residency and course-hour requirements.) In addition to the required courses listed below, the mandatory 12 units per semester may also include independent study courses (LING 580), TA credit (LING 590), dissertation writing (LING 800), relevant courses in other departments, and the one unit you receive for colloquium attendance (LING 550). With no previous linguistics background, course work in the first three years will include:

• 1 problem-solving course in linguistic analysis (LING 500) to be taken in the first year of study
• 2 courses in the area of phonetics/phonology (LING 501 and 511)
• 2 courses in the area of syntactic/semantic analysis (LING 504 and LING 515 or LING 413)
• The two-course sequence in Field Methods (LING 407 and LING 408) to be taken normally in the second year of study
• 2 seminars in the department, usually taken in the second and/or third year of study
• 5 additional elective courses, including 2 courses in other subfields of linguistics

In all of your course work, a grade level of B- (B minus) is the formal minimum for a passing performance in the graduate program. In addition to your course grades, however, the general assessment of your overall progress in the program will also include the opinions of the faculty. This is of practical importance because the faculty meets at the end of each semester to discuss graduate students' progress, and in the spring of each year to discuss the renewal of financial support for the following year. Renewal of your fellowship is dependent from year to year upon continuing satisfactory progress in your studies.

As part of your training in linguistics, the department makes assignments in addition to your normal course work. For students receiving a fellowship, this assignment is generally in the form of a Teaching Assistantship. You are expected to TA for one semester each year during the time you are receiving departmental financial support.

As a TA, you will work closely with the instructor of an undergraduate course. Your duties include attending lecture, holding at least one office hour per week, grading assignments and exams, and holding occasional review sessions for students. This is also an excellent opportunity for you to gain classroom experience, and for this reason you should also plan to give one guest lecture during the course of the semester. Ask the course instructor for feedback and tips on your presentation. In general, you should expect to spend around 10 hours per week on your TA duties, although some weeks may be closer to 0 hours of work, while other weeks (particularly during midterm and final grading) may be busier than 10 hours. Because of your TA requirements, you must plan to be in residence during the entire semester for which you are a TA. Do not plan to leave town until two days after the last day of the exam period. You must work out details of any planned absences with the faculty member for whom you are TA'ing. Your work as a TA is a crucial component of your graduate training, is a key factor in faculty letters of recommendation, will help make you more marketable for job searches, and, most importantly, is an enormous influence (either positive or negative) on the undergraduate students with whom you are working. For these reasons, you should approach your TA duties with the utmost of dedication and integrity.

In lieu of a TAship, you may occasionally be asked to perform other duties for the semester instead. Assignments may include serving as a research assistant in faculty projects, field assistants for faculty members who are working on fieldwork in a specific area, updating the department web page, or organizing and coordinating a conference. All such assignments are under the direct supervision of a faculty member, and are likewise important components of your graduate training and reasonable additions to your curriculum vita.

On occasion, the department allows advanced grad students the responsibility of being sole instructor for an introductory linguistics course, working under the supervision of a faculty member. This gives you an advantage on the job market and an opportunity for classroom experience and feedback on your teaching. In order to teach a course as sole instructor, you must have previously served as a TA for that course, receive an endorsement from the faculty member for whom you TA'd, and have permission from the graduate advisor and department chair. You will work closely with a faculty member in all aspects of teaching, including preparing the syllabus, lecturing, designing assignments and exams, and grading. If you wish to be considered for this opportunity, please discuss this with both the graduate advisor and the TA coordinator during Spring Semester of the year prior to when you would like to teach. Bear in mind that the department has the final say in all matters of course assignment.

Teaching experience is a necessary and important component of your doctoral program, since a Ph.D. functions in part as a teaching qualification for higher education. The department wants to make your TA'ing experiences as positive as possible. We will do our best to match your skills and interests with your teaching duties, and to ensure that these duties do not interfere with your timely progress to the Ph.D. degree. Dr. Robert Englebretson at reng is currently the departmental TA coordinator. The TA coordinator works with faculty and grad students on assigning TAships, is available to help resolve any problems that come up, and serves as a resource for grad students on issues related to all aspects of teaching. During the Spring Semester of every year, the TA coordinator will contact you regarding your preferences for a TA assignment for the upcoming year. This is the time to bring up any special circumstances that may impact your availability for the following year (fieldwork, etc.), and courses which you would especially like to TA for. This is also an appropriate time to discuss interest in teaching a course as the sole instructor. In general, all incoming grad students will be assigned to TA for LING 200 (the large undergraduate intro course). Each year during the semester in which you are TA'ing, you should sign up for LING 590 (Teaching Linguistics) for 3 hours of credit. Finally, it is the general policy of the department that you will not be asked to TA more than twice for the same course during your graduate career.

Research Papers

Before advancing to candidacy, you must prepare two in-depth research papers (generally referred to as 'publishable papers') under the supervision of a three-member paper committee. Each publishable paper must represent a different area in the field of linguistics (as determined by the Linguistics faculty). Choose each paper committee in consultation with your faculty mentor, and fill out a form for each of the two committees. The committees will read and referee the papers, and give you comments to help improve your research project, writing, argumentation, and to help you make the paper publishable. Once all three committee members have signed your publishable-paper forms, you will have fulfilled this requirement.

You are required to present one of your papers at a departmental colloquium. You are also expected, whenever possible, to submit your papers for presentation at relevant conferences and for publication in journals, edited volumes, or conference proceedings. The department requires that your papers follow the LSA style sheet, except in cases where the paper is intended for submission to a specified journal with a different style sheet.

Appropriate deadlines for completion of the papers are indicated in the timeline of milestones to the Ph.D. Students are encouraged to begin working on publishable papers as soon as possible. You should aim to finish your first publishable paper no later than the end of your second year, and your second publishable paper by the end of your third. This schedule will allow you to spend your fourth year focusing on writing your prospectus and advancing to candidacy. Students with an M.A. may progress faster; such students often form their first paper committee during Spring Semester of the first year, and aim to complete the paper by the end of Fall Semester of the second. Finishing the second paper by the end of Fall Semester of the third year enables such students to advance to candidacy during Spring Semester of the third year, and to aim to complete the Ph.D. in four years.

The department sponsors a weekly colloquium series consisting of talks by Rice Linguistics faculty and grads, relevant faculty in other departments, and invited visiting speakers. Anyone is welcome to attend the colloquia. Speakers and topics are listed on the department's web page. Department faculty and graduate students are subscribed to an e-mail distribution list which disseminates announcements of each week's talk, along with a short abstract. Others may subscribe to this list by visiting the colloquium e-mail distribution list. Each member of the department is expected to attend. As a grad student, you should register for LING 550 (Colloquium) which gives you one hour credit per semester for colloquium attendance.

You are required to present one of your publishable papers as a departmental colloquium. Contact the department colloquium organizer, currently Dr. Michel Achard at achard to arrange to do this. If you are entering the program with a B.A., you should plan to present your colloquium during your third year. If you are entering the department with an M.A., you should plan to present your colloquium during your second year. In addition to your required publishable-paper colloquium, you are always welcome to give a talk on other projects you wish to share with the department, especially those related to your summer research proposals. You may also find it helpful to use a colloquium slot for giving a practice talk for an upcoming conference presentation, in order to get input and feedback before presenting your work at the conference itself.

For the departmental language requirements, students must show competency in at least two languages other than English. Both languages must be approved by the departmental Graduate advisor as well as your committee chair. You should meet with the graduate advisor to discuss your proposed languages and your plan for fulfilling the requirements. You are encouraged to begin filling your language requirements early. You should try to fulfill at least one in your first two years of study. Both requirements must be filled before advancement to candidacy.

One of these languages must be a research language -- a language with considerable published linguistics literature, such as German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, or Japanese. Students will demonstrate mastery of this language either by completion of two years of college-level study with a grade of B or better each term, or by means of a translation exam supervised by a Linguistics faculty member. If you choose the translation exam option, you are expected to translate a Linguistics-related text of approximately 500 words into English. Translations must be completed within 1-1/2 hours with the aid of a dictionary.

For the second of the two required languages, you may choose any of the following options. (1) You may again choose a research language and satisfy the requirement as described above. (2) You may choose another language, and satisfy the requirement by two years of college-level language classes with a grade of B or better each term. (3) You may satisfy this requirement by carrying on a conversation with a native speaker of that language, under the supervision of a Linguistics faculty member. (It is up to you to locate and make arrangements with a suitable native speaker.)

If your native language is not English, you cannot use English to satisfy this requirement. However, you may use your native language as one of the required languages, if it has been your language of formal education through high school, or, in exceptional cases, with the consent of your mentor and the graduate advisor.

By about the beginning of the fourth year students should form their third and final committee -- the dissertation committee. (Students aiming to finish in 4 years should form this committee in spring of their third year.) This committee must consist of at least three tenured or tenure-track Rice faculty members. Two of your dissertation committee members must be Linguistics faculty, and the third must be someone from another department at Rice. Your committee may have additional members as well, but this is not required.

Your first task with the dissertation committee is to write a third research paper, called the dissertation prospectus. The prospectus should consist of a substantial dissertation proposal and a comprehensive bibliography. It may be based on a grant proposal to an external funding agency, particularly in the case of proposed fieldwork. The prospectus may be in a different area of linguistics than either of the two publishable papers, or it may in fact overlap with one or both of the earlier papers. The work described in the prospectus should lead naturally into your dissertation. The prospectus should contain a statement of the topic area of your proposed dissertation project, a problem statement, a statement of the theoretical orientation and methodology, and a comprehensive bibliography. Work out the specific details of your prospectus with the members of your dissertation committee. You will defend the prospectus to them during your qualifying examination when you advance to candidacy.

When you have completed your course work, when both publishable papers have been approved, and after you have passed your language examinations and submitted your prospectus, you will take an oral qualifying exam, to be administered by the dissertation committee. The exam will consist of two parts, a general exam, demonstrating your knowledge of the field, and a dissertation prospectus hearing. Upon completion of this qualifying examination, you will then apply for Candidacy for the Ph.D. University policy requires that you advance to candidacy before the beginning of your ninth semester of study at Rice. Any extensions to this time limit must be requested by petitioning the Office of Graduate Study, and are granted only under extraordinary circumstances. It is your responsibility to ensure that you advance by this deadline. You are always welcome to advance earlier, as long as you have met the above requirements. In general, advancement to candidacy as early as you can fulfill the requirements is desirable. Once you have advanced, you are considered 'ABD' (All But Dissertation). ABD status (or imminent ABD status at time of application) is generally the time you may begin applying for academic jobs and post-docs. Application for some research grants also requires this status.

Following advancement to candidacy, you should work full time toward the completion of the dissertation. Students generally find writing a dissertation to be a challenging and rewarding process. However, it is also an inherently stressful activity. For this reason, you should meet regularly with the members of your committee at every stage of your project, and keep in touch with them about data collection and writing. It would also be wise to join a dissertation-writing group of some sort. Check with the GSA regarding dissertation-writing groups that meet on campus. There is also a good deal of literature available about the dissertation-writing process. One book which students have found particularly helpful is: [Bolker, Joan. 1998. Writing your dissertation in fifteen minutes a day: a guide to starting, revising, and finishing your doctoral thesis. New York: Holt.]. And finally, remember that all of the faculty members have also written a dissertation (and likely supervised a number of them too), and are happy to discuss any issues that come up for you.

Upon completion of an acceptable draft of your dissertation, you will then, in consultation with the Chair of your Dissertation Committee, schedule a public defense of your work. All members of the Rice community are invited to the defense, and anyone else is welcome to attend. You should prepare a short presentation of your work, summarizing the main research question(s), how you went about doing your project, and your key findings. If your dissertation is a grammar, your defense talk should present a basic overview of the language. Your dissertation committee will then ask you questions about your dissertation, as may other members of the audience, time permitting.

The draft of your dissertation which you intend to be the basis of your defense must be delivered to your committee members no later than March 15 if you plan to graduate in May of that year. There are a host of important deadlines to keep track of, as well as very specific formatting minutia which you must strictly follow in order to file the dissertation. Consult the relevant section of the Rice General Announcements, and thoroughly study the Thesis Guidelines section of the Office of research and Graduate Studies web page. As always, you are ultimately responsible for being aware of and complying with all formal requirements and university deadlines. After you have submitted a complete draft of your dissertation, defended it publicly, and made any revisions suggested by your committee, you are ready to file the dissertation.

When the final version of the dissertation is accepted by the doctoral committee and filed with the university, and all other requirements are certified as fulfilled, you have earned a Ph.D. in Linguistics!

The following table gives a general overview of how students typically proceed through the program. We intend for this to serve as a guide for you on a year-by-year basis, so that you can keep track of your progress and complete the Ph.D. in a scheduled and relatively surprise-free manner. We understand, of course, that each student is unique. Some students have reasons why they will need to proceed at a slightly different pace. (Prior background, a need to conduct extensive fieldwork, time-consuming experimental research, or personal situations and circumstances.) We would like to assure you that the faculty treats each student as an individual person, and considers each students degree progress on a case-by-case basis. So, while it is a good idea to keep to the following timelines as much as possible, students are not strictly bound by them. Your committee, the department chair, and the graduate advisor are all available for you to discuss any concerns about your progress to the Ph.D.

General overview of program

Students wishing to complete the Ph.D. in four years (e.g. students with M.A. in Linguistics)

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