PhD linguistics (phonology psycholinguistics)

[Des Grieux]

Hello fellow linguists!

I am an international student majoring in Linguistics at a European university. I would be interested to do graduate work in experimental phonology (prosody) and pscholinguistics, possibly expanding into neurolinguistcs. My interests are grounded in linguistic theory and they are likely to remain this way. I've got a few questions I hope you'll be able to help me with:

1. Which US schools (and possibly POIs) are strong in experimental phonology (prosody), psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics?

2. How well are researchers in psycho- and neurolinguistics integrated into traditional linguistics deparments (i.e. not deparments like JHU or Brown that are integrated into the wider area of cog-sci)? The reason I'm asking this question is that I'm worried that my interests may sound too interdisciplinary for a more traditional linguistics deparment. Would they expect me (or at least me more assured of my future as a linguist) to demonstrate interest in more traditional areas of linguistics like (segmental) phonology, syntax and semantics as well?

Any advice will be much appreciated.

[fuzzylogician]

Off the top of my head (and I could be wrong here), maybe you could look at the programs at Maryland or Rochester. At MIT you could apply to either BCS or Linguistics. If you apply to Ling you'll have access to excellent phonologists and you could do psycholing work but it'll be more difficult to do neuro since the facilities are over at BCS. If you apply to BCS, you'll get some psycholing and more access to neuroling but there is no one with interests in phonology, as far as I know. UMass has experimental work but I don't know about neuro. CUNY also has facilities for experimental work, but again I don't know if they are accessible through the traditional linguistics program. The only Ling program that I know has its own neuro facility is NYU.

Most (perhaps all) of the theoretical ling programs I mentioned will require you to take courses in the traditional fields (phonology, syntax, semantics). I hardly imagine they expect you to show interest in all of those fields but if you are not interested in any of them you may find that (1) you're bored in a lot of the 1st year classes, and also not getting educated in the areas you are interested in, and (2) you have limited options for advisors and committee members down the line. Why are JHU or Brown not options that you are considering? It sounds like the more inter-disciplinary programs are exactly what you're looking for.

Also, do you want to work with EEG, MEG or fMRI? EEGs are more accessible and less expensive, you can find them in many psych programs and many have some researchers with some interest in language. MEG and MRI facilities are much more expensive and so less programs have them available. Looking based on facilities could also delimit your search somewhat.

[ladyling]

Hmm, it would be useful to have a more elaborated sense of your interests. There are a lot of programs that incorporate experimental phonology and prosody is often a large component of those experiments since much current theoretical phonology focuses on suprasegmental phenomena. There are programs like Northwestern whose primary focus is experimental phonology/psycholinguistics, but which have no connections (to my knowledge) with neurolinguistics. On the flipside, there are programs like the ones you mentioned--Brown and JHU--where neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics drive the departments. Though, given that JHU has Geraldine Legendre and Paul Smolensky, I wouldn't write them off so easily. Could you give us a better idea of how your interests connect with these fields? That might help us make better, more informed suggestions.

Edited July 11, 2012 by ladyling

[snarky]

I do neurolinguistics & theoretical syntax/semantics and I'd agree that Maryland & NYU would be good choices. (And maybe also look into UC San Diego.) It's worth mentioning that there is a bit of an idiological divide between linguists and neuroscientists; a lot of neuroscientists are critical of modern linguistic theories, plus linguists don't always find neurolinguistic investigations relevant to their work. Maybe that's why there aren't that many schools right now that do both in the same department or collaborate heavily between departments.

One thing I would underscore is that it's extremely important to find a school that can support the methodology you want to use (as fuzzy mentions above). It's very difficult to do neuroimaging in a program where your faculty only work with behavioral methods or ERP. Neuroimaging is both complicated and expensive (the fMRI at my school costs $400/hour) and you need a close mentor to make that type of research possible -- to help with funding, logistics, and experimental design, all of which will be nearly impossible to do all on your own.

Edited August 4, 2012 by snarky