PhD Linguistics: The University of Manchester

Course description

Linguistics and English Language at Manchester is virtually unique in the UK and beyond in the breadth of subject areas and theoretical approaches represented by its members, many of whom are internationally renowned scholars in their specialisms. Particular strengths in the discipline include: endangered languages and field linguistics, the linguistics of English (both synchronic and diachronic), phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax (especially Lexical-Functional Grammar and Construction Grammar), typology, language contact and sociolinguistics, historical linguistics (especially English, Romance and Germanic), semantics (both formal and cognitive), cognitive linguistics, corpus and computational linguistics, and language acquisition.

Manchester is an international centre for research activities in linguistics and English language. Manchester scholars participated in the European Typology Project, contributed to The Cambridge history of the English language and The Cambridge grammar of the English language, and serve on the editorial boards of major journals and publishers: two of the three editors of the journal English Language and Linguistics and the editor of Romani Studies are at Manchester. Four volumes of the Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics series ( Lexical semantics, Intonation, Typology and Universals and cognitive linguistics) were written by current or previous members of staff. The Manchester Phonology Meeting, which takes place annually in May, has arguably become the world's most important regular conference for phonologists. Other major meetings that have taken place in Manchester include the International Historical Linguistics Conference, the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, the annual meeting of the Linguistic Association of Great Britain, the annual Lexical-Functional Grammar Conference, and the International Conference on Romani Linguistics. In addition, for the last ten years they have hosted the Manchester Postgraduate Linguistics Conference, a conference organized by postgraduates for postgraduates.

Entry requirements

Academic entry qualification overview:

Successful completion of a Masters course, or its overseas equivalent, with an element of research training, is a prerequisite for entry to a PhD. A research proposal must be included with the formal application materials.

English language:

Students whose first language is not English require an overall IELTS score of 7.0 with 7.0 in the writing component or a TOEFL score of 600 (paper-based test), 250 (computer-based test) or 100 (internet-based test).