Balanced program?

[linggeek]

I'm narrowing my list of grad programs I am applying to by the end of the week. I've looked at so many departments' websites but I may have missed some. I am looking for something with a good balance of phonetics and phonology and perhaps sociolinguistics. Any suggestions?

Thanks.

[Grad Nat]

The linguistic PhD and MA program at McGill university looks very good. From what I have seen, it has a strong phonetics focus and you can take sociolinguistics as an elective. The sociolinguistic teacher is very well known and has won an award on teaching, so it must be quite an experience learning from him.

[PhDreaming]

linggeek - where did you end up applying? I know it's too late and I probably don't need any more competition but Stanford is great for p-side and socioling.

[linggeek]

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The linguistic PhD and MA program at McGill university looks very good

McGill was one of my dream schools location wise (would love to live in Quebec). But I decided against it. They seemed to be heavily into semantics & syntax but I did note a couple of professors who had similar interests as me. Am I wrong?

linggeek - where did you end up applying? I know it's too late and I probably don't need any more competition but Stanford is great for p-side and socioling.

PM forthcoming. I decided against Stanford too. One of my good friends who did her MA there told me about the focus. So I decided against that too.

[Grad Nat]

McGill was one of my dream schools location wise (would love to live in Quebec). But I decided against it. They seemed to be heavily into semantics & syntax but I did note a couple of professors who had similar interests as me. Am I wrong?

From what I know, prof. Charles Boberg has worked on phonetics and phonology, and he is a teacher at McGill. Howevwe, I have not studied there, so I don't really know what is the dept's main focus. I think that if it is your dream school, you should apply. They would not accept a student if they thought he or she had interests that were too different from their own.

Check the prof.'s profile on McGill web page: http://www.mcgill.ca/linguistics/people/boberg

[itaal]

McGill was one of my dream schools location wise (would love to live in Quebec). But I decided against it. They seemed to be heavily into semantics & syntax but I did note a couple of professors who had similar interests as me. Am I wrong?

Besides Boberg, McGill has a few other phonologists/phoneticians: Goad (phonology, language acquisition), Wagner (phonology, esp. prosody, syntax/semantics-phonology interface), Clayards (phonetics) and also Piggott (phonology), who retired a couple years ago but is still involved in the department's research. It's true that currently McGill is stronger in syntax and semantics but the department's focus is not biased towards that. They're actually hiring one more phonologist. Also, since the department has strong interests in interface issues, both syntax-semantics and syntax-phonology interfaces, cross-field collaborations are very common. However, I wouldn't recommend someone apply to McGill if he focuses more on sociolinguistics and phonetics, unless his interests match with Boberg's very closely.