Fields/methodology vs. Language family

[linggeek]

I am currently looking for some grad schools to apply to.

Now, I am fairly certain what fields of linguistics I am interested in. And I feel really strongly about a family of languages that I would be working on.

I have identified a program that is all about said language family, and judging from a couple of people I've spoken to there, my chances of getting accepted there seem to be pretty high.

But I am looking at other schools, particularly reach and dream schools that I could apply to. While I think they are awesome on the methodology, a number of them don't really cater to the language family I'm interested in.

So, I ask... How important is the language family that I am interested in compared to the field/methodologies I'm into?

Thanks!

[fuzzylogician]

I'm guessing from your post that you may be interested in a different kind of linguistics than I know so take my answer with an even greater grain of salt than usual, but I think that the most important thing is having someone who can guide you in the methodology of the research, more so than having someone who studies the same language family or phenomena as you. Of course it helps to also have someone at the school who either knows (at least) a little bit about that language family or else has experience working on similar phenomena to those that interest you in other languages, but you can do good research without having a single expert who does everything that you do. One thing you may want to investigate at those schools that interest you but don't have that one expert is how many of the potential advisors' students there work on languages/phenomena other than those that the advisor is working on. That will give you a good indication of how much that kind of independence is encouraged and also how supportive the potential advisor is when it comes to advising broader topics than his/her specialty.