Best Historical Linguistics Programs

[mdellineout]

This is, of course, entirely subjective, but I'd love to get some opinions.

[funchaku]

I know Harvard has a very good program

[gubidal092]

I'm applying to Linguistics PhD programs with a historical focus/concentration as well. I looked around and it seems the best are (in no particular order):

UPenn, Yale, Harvard, UC Berkley, UCLA, Ohio State U, U. of Illinois Urbana-Champagne, I think university of Michigan might be worth a look, UNC Chapel Hill is good but no longer accepts PhD students (I think they're phasing it out), Stanford... If you're interested in Indo-European historical linguistics, UCLA has an indo-european studies program that is closely tied in with the linguistics department, and from my understanding you can do the program from a linguistic pov.

Anyway, that's just a couple of them...

[illuminatedmannequin]

How about MIT's program? Chomsky's there, right?

[fuzzylogician]

Chomsky is indeed at MIT, but I'm not sure it's the best place to go for Historical Linguistics, unless you don't mind a heavy load of theoretical stuff that may or may not be relevant to your research.

[pangur-ban]

Cornell, UPenn, and the University of Georgia should not be overlooked...

[darrick]

The University of Kentucky has a new MA in Linguistic Theory and Typology, and there are multiple historical linguists there. There's work being done in historical sociolinguistics, Proto-Indo-European phonology, etc.