harvard phd linguistics

Linguistics

Undergraduate Program

The concentration in Linguistics, the scientific study of language, emphasizes linguistic theory, historical linguistics, and the relationship between language and cognition, and cuts across the humanities, social sciences, cognitive sciences, physical sciences, and biological sciences. Students are also eligible to apply for an A.B./A.M. degree program.

The Department of Linguistics is home to one of the oldest and most distinguished linguistics programs in the United States. Today, students and faculty come from many different backgrounds and represent a wide range of interests, from purely theoretical to typological, historical, and experimental. What they share is a commitment to empirically grounded research and a respect for the rich traditions of the field.

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QS World University Rankings by Subject 2024: Linguistics

Discover which universities around the world are the best for linguistics with the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2024.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) continues to be the best university in the world for linguistics, achieving a top score in two of the four rankings indicators. 

There are some notable climbers in the top 10 this year, with Lancaster University rising seven places to third - one of four UK universities in the top 10.

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Domestic 70% International 30%

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Published on: 10 April 2024

† Corrections to university performance may be made after publication. You can view the release version and a summary of any edits  here .

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Meaning & Modality Linguistics Laboratory

Director kathryn davidson.

• Linguistics@Harvard

Welcome to the lab!

Welcome to the Meaning and Modality (M&M) Laboratory at Harvard Linguistics! We are interested in understanding the incredible human capacity for language, especially the ability to convey abstract, infinite, specific meanings across the multiple modalities for natural language, including both speech and sign. Our work spans the subfields of formal semantics, pragmatics, syntax, language acquisition, logic and psycholinguistics in an effort to understand the relationship between linguistic meaning, language mode, language development, and human cognition, with special focus on cross-linguistic experimental semantic studies.

(Lab meeting, October 2023)

Latest News

Ankana, hayley, yagmur, and kate give talks at elm.

Dr. Yuhan Zhang!

Hande at Chicago Linguistic Society

Our 5th year graduate student  Hande Sevgi   presented a talk on "Two-handed classifiers in sign languages: an investigation in Turkish Sign Language" at the Chicago Linguistic Society April 26-28. Here is Hande with fellow Harvard Linguists (Tanya Bondarenko and Jacob Kodner) at the beautiful U Chicago campus!

Kate awarded the Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award by GSAS!

If you've ever had the chance to work with Kate, you'd know she's a truly exceptional mentor. And now, it's official. Kate has won the 2024 Everett I. Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award!

What is this award? Well, this award is a big deal because it's all about recognizing outstanding mentors like Kate. Every year, students nominate faculty members who go above and beyond to support them. There were 77, yes SEVENTY-SEVEN, faculty members who got nominated this year, and our wonderful Kate was among the seven winners. Congratulations!

Kate, your win isn't just about a fancy title—it's about the countless lives you've positively impacted. Thank you for being such an incredible mentor! Thank you for your academic and emotional support! We're lucky to have you.

(We will have more photos :D)

Lab members attend the LSA in NYC

M&M at Sinn & Bedeutung

This year Sinn & Bedeutung (SuB 28) at Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) from September 5-8, 2023, with several lab members and alums participating. Natasha Thalluri  and  Kathryn Davidson  presented their paper "Degrees and depiction - Gradability in sign languages", Anatasia Tsilia  and  Kathryn Davidson  presented their paper "Effects of iconicity and monocity on licensing complement anaphora", and  Yağmur Sağ presented their paper "Cardinality and (in)definiteness. Our former graduate student and lab member Dorothy Ahn presented their work "Deriving (anti-)uniquness in definite expressions" as an invited speaker.

Iconicity workshop at the LSA Summer Institute at UMass

Commencement 2023

Harvard at SALT

This year Semantics And Linguistic Theory (SALT) was held at Yale, with several lab members and alums participating. Ankana Saha, Yağmur Sağ & Kathryn Davidson presented a poster "Focus on demonstratives: Experiments in English & Turkish", Gennaro Chierchia gave an invited talk, and (alums) Becky Jarvis presented on "Movement & interpretation of quantifiers in internally-headed relative clauses" and Johanna Alstott presented a poster on "Ordinal Numbers: Not Superlatives, but Modifiers of Superlatives", and Ankana , Yağmur and Dasha Bikina  all presented posters at the workshop on "(In)definiteness and genericity across language". Pictured are the Harvard semantics crew, present and past, at SALT.

Mikaela to Penn, Richard to Yale

Meaning & Modality Laboratory Harvard University 2 Arrow Street, 4th floor Cambridge, MA 02138

September 2024

Slavic Languages and Literatures

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This program offers you the opportunity to study a broad range of Slavic traditions, including Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, Polish, Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. This wide breadth of study allows you to choose the path that most interests you.

Examples of recent student dissertations include “Miracle, Mystery, Authority: The Rise of Governmentality in Early Modern Russia,” “Unseemly Selves: Russian Realism and Early Psychiatry,” “Life Laid Bare: The Lives and Deaths of Animals in Soviet Cinema,” “The Reemergence of the Epic and Its Use in Mythmaking among Members of the Eastern European Yiddish Avant-Garde from 1914-27,” and “Ivan the Terrible’s Queer Legacy in Art.”

Graduates of the program have gone on to secure faculty positions at prestigious institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University, Indiana University, and Yale University. Others have gone into careers at organizations such as Harvard University Press and positions in libraries, museums, translation, and film direction.

If you are interested in a terminal master’s degree, please review information on the  master’s degree in Regional Studies: Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia (REECA)  offered by the  Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies .

Additional information on the graduate program is available from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures , and requirements for the degree are detailed in Policies .

Areas of Study

Linguistics | Literature

Admissions Requirements

Please review the admissions requirements and other information before applying. You can find degree program-specific admissions requirements below and access additional guidance on applying from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures .

Academic Background

Applicants with traditional and nontraditional preparation in the field are welcome to apply, as long as their foreign language, linguistic, and literary studies skills are strong. Formal training in literature or linguistics is highly desirable for admission.

Writing Sample

A writing sample is required as part of the application and should be a recent and extensive sample of the student’s written work in English and should be between 20 to 25 pages.

Applicants should show knowledge of Russian or other Slavic language of their choice equivalent to the Slavic courses Russian 113 and Russian 114 (fourth-year level Russian). We welcome knowledge of French or German, although this is not a prerequisite.

Personal Statement

Standardized tests.

GRE General: Optional

The department ordinarily interviews finalists for admission in late January and early February.

Campus Visits

We welcome potential candidates who wish to come to Cambridge for informational interviews during the spring or fall before submitting an application. Students admitted to the program are typically invited to visit campus in the spring. Contact the director of graduate studies for more information.

Theses and Dissertations

Theses & Dissertations for Slavic Languages and Literatures

See list of Slavic Languages and Literatures faculty

APPLICATION DEADLINE

Questions about the program.

Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics

Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics is a publication of the graduate students of the Department of Linguistics at Harvard University. It is a venue for students and faculty to publish papers that reflect ongoing research and papers that are in their early stages, in order to stimulate discussion and inform the wider linguistics community about exciting developments at Harvard.

12 volumes of HWPL (1992-2007) have been published and are now out of print, and individual articles are available as PDFs through this website. As of volume 13 (now in press, estimated date of publication Fall 2015), HWPL will be published and distributed by our neighbors and colleagues at MIT Working Papers in Linguistics.

For information on formatting your submissions to HWPL and for article templates, see ‘ submissions ‘.

Please direct all questions to  Julia Sturm .

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Department of Romance Languages & Literatures

• Harvard Library

Spanish and Latin American

The Ph.D. Program in Spanish and Latin American Literatures draws on the talents of a diverse faculty whose research interests span Spain and the Americas, from Medieval and colonial multiculturalism to postmodern currents. Our specialties include Renaissance humanism, the transatlantic Baroque, nineteenth-century nation building, and contemporary negotiations between culture and politics, including gender studies and Latino studies. Language is the core of literary analysis, and our faculty teaches texts in the original, primarily in Spanish and Portuguese, but often including other languages (Arabic, Catalan, French, Galician, Hebrew, Mapuche, Quechua, etc.). At the doctoral level, our classes are small seminars and discussion groups, some with specialized foci and others with a panoramic approach.

The graduate student at RLL can expect a vibrant intellectual life, which promotes originality and rigor in students, encouraging them to explore new close and contextual readings in our own field, and also interdisciplinary paths across the university. Some students develop clusters of courses in other sections of the Department, which allows them to pursue comparative studies in Romance languages, while other students develop links to allied disciplines, such as philosophy, film studies, government, women's studies, African and African American Studies.

The collaboration among faculty members and our graduate students in a range of intellectual projects had grown steadily and encourages our future colleagues to gain experience in the administration of conferences, the design of courses, and the edition and translation of books and manuscripts. Currently, our faculty sponsors conferences and lecture series on Hispanic Cultures, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Cultural Agents, at the Center for the Humanities, as well as research seminar sessions in the Houghton Rare Books Library, and events at the Real Colegio Complutense and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS). A new initiative on Cultural Agents, housed at the Center for Government and International Studies, promotes the social contributions to be made through humanist scholarship.

Our current distinguished program in Hispanic Literatures continues an illustrious history which dates from the nineteenth century, when figures such as George Ticknor and Henry Longfellow fostered the study and dissemination of the literatures of Spain in the U.S. During the twentieth century, the program grew to include stellar Latin American figures such as Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa and other writers who have taught in our Department, together with renowned scholars including Raimundo Lida, Juan Marichal, Dámaso Alonso, Jorge Guillén, Claudio Guillén, Stephen Gilman. Yet today, our greatest source of pride are the young colleagues who have graduated from our program and who enrich the intellectual lives of many prominent universities, including Harvard.

Diana Sorensen  

To see our program requirements, see the  GSAS Policies .

Graduate Contacts

Kathy Hanley (Graduate Program Coordinator)

Harvard University PhD in Foreign Languages & Linguistics

How much does a doctorate in foreign languages & linguistics from harvard cost, harvard graduate tuition and fees.

Does Harvard Offer an Online PhD in Foreign Languages & Linguistics?

Harvard doctorate student diversity for foreign languages & linguistics, male-to-female ratio.

Women made up around 65.2% of the foreign languages and linguistics students who took home a doctor’s degree in 2019-2020. This is higher than the nationwide number of 55.2%.

Racial-Ethnic Diversity

Racial-ethnic minority graduates* made up 8.7% of the foreign languages and linguistics doctor’s degrees at Harvard in 2019-2020. This is lower than the nationwide number of 18%.

PhD in Foreign Languages & Linguistics Focus Areas at Harvard

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Linguistics

Degree Type

PhD in Linguistics at the prestigious Harvard University is a prestigious degree that offers in-depth learning in Linguistics. Being a renowned university, Harvard University receives enough funds to ensure the best education facilities for its students across all programs. This doctorate program offered full-time primarily focuses on the practical implementation of fresh ideas through rigorous study and research. The students are encouraged to add new aspects and findings to the existing area of knowledge. PhD in Linguistics at Harvard is ranked globally by estimated organisations. Such recognition speaks volumes about the course’s importance and effectiveness in the present scenario. The top-notch faculty, modern facilities, and the aura of creativity and innovation in the Harvard campus is a life-changing experience for the students looking forward to kickstarting or upgrading their careers. Overall, a PhD in Linguistics at Harvard University is an excellent opportunity to grow into a learned professional and bring new developments in the world.

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Master’s Program Admissions

Important dates.

Application Deadline: December 3, 2024 at 11:59 a.m. ET

Financial Aid Application Deadline: January 2025

Admission Notification: Mid-March 2025

Office Address: Office of Admissions & Financial Aid 124 Mount Auburn Street Suite 165-South Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Mailing Address: Office of Admissions & Financial Aid 79 John F. Kennedy Street Mailbox 94 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

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You are welcome at Harvard Kennedy School

For Harvard Kennedy School to succeed at our mission of improving public policy and public leadership around the world, we need to draw together outstanding students with a wide array of experiences and perspectives. If you share our commitment to making a better world for all people, you are welcome at the Kennedy School.

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Are you ready to answer the call to public service? Learn how to apply for our master’s degree programs.

Admissions Events

There are a number of ways for you to engage with members of the Kennedy School community and learn more about the application process.

Admissions & Financial Aid Blog

Our blog is a go-to resource for applying to our master’s degree programs and learning about life at HKS.

Master’s Programs Overview

Your Admissions and Financial Aid Counselor

We invite you to be in touch with us about applying to our master’s degree programs. You may email our general inbox or reach out to a specific staff member based on your program of interest.

Katie Kelsall

Assistant Director of Admissions & Financial Aid Master in Public Policy (MPP): Student last names M-Z [email protected]

Rodrigue Lembvem

Assistant Director of Admissions & Financial Aid Mid-Career Master in Public Administration (MC/MPA) including Mason Fellows [email protected]

Leigh McLaren

Assistant Director of Admissions & Financial Aid Master in Public Policy (MPP): Student last names A-L [email protected]

Assistant Director of Admissions & Financial Aid Master in Public Administration (MPA) and Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) [email protected]

Financial Assistance

We understand that there are many factors to consider when deciding whether to pursue a master’s degree, one of which will be how to finance your education. We are committed to distributing as much financial assistance as possible to our talented students and offer competitive awards based on a combination of merit and need. Learn more about applying for scholarships and fellowships at HKS.

*Based on an average for academic years 2023-2024 and 2024-2025

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Explore the HKS campus from wherever you are. Navigate to the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, where you may one day attend a panel discussion with heads of state and political leaders. Look inside a classroom. Stop in the Student Lounge, where students socialize and study between classes. Get to know the HKS campus.

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