Linguistics Honours (B.A.) (60 credits)
Offered by: Linguistics (Faculty of Arts)
Degree: Bachelor of Arts
Program credit weight: 60
Program Description
The B.A. Honours in Linguistics program focuses on the various sub-areas of linguistics with substantial breadth and depth. The program includes an Honours Thesis that emphasizes the process of independent research.
Honours students must maintain a GPA of 3.30 (B+ average) in their program courses and a minimum grade of B+ must be obtained in three out of four of the following courses: LING 330 Phonetics., LING 331 Phonology 1., LING 360 Introduction to Semantics., LING 371 Syntax 1., as well as LING 480D1 Honours Thesis./LING 480D2 Honours Thesis.. According to Faculty of Arts regulations, Honours students must also maintain a minimum CGPA of 3.00 in general. The requirement for First Class Honours is a CGPA of 3.50 and a minimum grade of A- in the Honours Thesis.
Degree Requirements — B.A. students
To be eligible for a B.A. degree, a student must fulfil all Faculty and program requirements as indicated in Degree Requirements for the Faculty of Arts.
We recommend that students consult an Arts OASIS advisor for degree planning.
Note: For information about Fall 2025 and Winter 2026 course offerings, please check back on May 8, 2025. Until then, the "Terms offered" field will appear blank for most courses while the class schedule is being finalized.
Required Courses (21 credits)
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| LING 201 | Introduction to Linguistics. | 3 |
Introduction to Linguistics. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. General introduction to linguistics, the scientific study of human language. Covers the core theoretical subfields of linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Also provides background on other subfields including sociolinguistics, pragmatics, historical linguistics, linguistic variation, and language acquisition. | ||
| LING 330 | Phonetics. | 3 |
Phonetics. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Transcription, identification, and production of speech sounds. Introduction to the acoustic properties of speech sounds, acoustic analysis of speech, and auditory phonetics. | ||
| LING 331 | Phonology 1. | 3 |
Phonology 1. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Introduction to phonological theory and analysis. | ||
| LING 360 | Introduction to Semantics. | 3 |
Introduction to Semantics. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Introduction to the rudiments of semantics, focusing on those aspects of meaning that are invariant across contexts and the ways in which the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituents. | ||
| LING 371 | Syntax 1. | 3 |
Syntax 1. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Introduction to the study of generative syntax of natural languages, emphasizing basic concepts and formalism: phrase structure rules, transformations, and conditions on rules. | ||
| LING 480D1 | Honours Thesis. | 3 |
Honours Thesis. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Honours thesis. | ||
| LING 480D2 | Honours Thesis. | 3 |
Honours Thesis. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. See LING 480D1 for course description. | ||
Required courses must be completed at McGill unless Departmental permission is obtained.
Complementary Courses (39 credits)
3 credits from the following:
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| COMP 230 | Logic and Computability. | 3 |
Logic and Computability. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Propositional Logic, predicate calculus, proof systems, computability Turing machines, Church-Turing thesis, unsolvable problems, completeness, incompleteness, Tarski semantics, uses and misuses of Gödel's theorem. | ||
| MATH 318 | Mathematical Logic. | 3 |
Mathematical Logic. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Propositional logic: truth-tables, formal proof systems, completeness and compactness theorems, Boolean algebras; first-order logic: formal proofs, Gödel's completeness theorem; axiomatic theories; set theory; Cantor's theorem, axiom of choice and Zorn's lemma, Peano arithmetic; Gödel's incompleteness theorem. | ||
| PHIL 210 | Introduction to Deductive Logic 1. | 3 |
Introduction to Deductive Logic 1. Terms offered: Summer 2025 An introduction to propositional and predicate logic; formalization of arguments, truth tables, systems of deduction, elementary metaresults, and related topics. | ||
24 credits of Linguistics (LING) courses, 15 of the credits in Linguistics must be at the 400/500 level and only 3 credits in Linguistics can be at the 200 level.
Other Fields
12 credits in related fields selected from the following list.
Computer Science
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| COMP 202 | Foundations of Programming. | 3 |
Foundations of Programming. Terms offered: Summer 2025 Introduction to computer programming in a high level language: variables, expressions, primitive types, methods, conditionals, loops. Introduction to algorithms, data structures (arrays, strings), modular software design, libraries, file input/output, debugging, exception handling. Selected topics. | ||
| COMP 230 | Logic and Computability. | 3 |
Logic and Computability. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Propositional Logic, predicate calculus, proof systems, computability Turing machines, Church-Turing thesis, unsolvable problems, completeness, incompleteness, Tarski semantics, uses and misuses of Gödel's theorem. | ||
| COMP 250 | Introduction to Computer Science. | 3 |
Introduction to Computer Science. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Mathematical tools (binary numbers, induction,recurrence relations, asymptotic complexity,establishing correctness of programs). Datastructures (arrays, stacks, queues, linked lists,trees, binary trees, binary search trees, heaps,hash tables). Recursive and non-recursivealgorithms (searching and sorting, tree andgraph traversal). Abstract data types. Objectoriented programming in Java (classes andobjects, interfaces, inheritance). Selected topics. | ||
French Language and Literature
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| FREN 231 | Linguistique française. | 3 |
Linguistique française. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Bref historique de la linguistique française de F. de Saussure à nos jours. Description linguistique du français moderne (éléments de phonologie, de phonétique normative, de lexicologie, de sémantique évolutive et synchronique, de syntaxe et de morphologie). | ||
| FREN 336 | Histoire de la langue française. | 3 |
Histoire de la langue française. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Histoire de la langue française, du bas-latin à la langue moderne. Étude de l'évolution phonétique, syntaxique, sémantique. Étude de textes des différentes époques. | ||
| FREN 434 | Sociolinguistique du français. | 3 |
Sociolinguistique du français. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Éléments de sociolinguistique et leur application aux pays francophones. Rapports entre les aspects phonologiques, grammaticaux et lexicologiques du parler et le milieu social. Langues en contact, planification linguistique. | ||
Language
Any course in language (other than the student's native language) - literature courses are not acceptable.
Mathematics
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| MATH 240 | Discrete Structures. | 3 |
Discrete Structures. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Introduction to discrete mathematics and applications. Logical reasoning and methods of proof. Elementary number theory and cryptography: prime numbers, modular equations, RSA encryption. Combinatorics: basic enumeration, combinatorial methods, recurrence equations. Graph theory: trees, cycles, planar graphs. | ||
Philosophy
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| PHIL 306 | Philosophy of Mind. | 3 |
Philosophy of Mind. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. A survey of major positions of the mind-body problem, focusing on such questions as: Do we have minds and bodies? Can minds affect bodies? Is mind identical to body? If so, in what sense "identical"? Can physical bodies be conscious. | ||
| PHIL 415 | Philosophy of Language. | 3 |
Philosophy of Language. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. An examination of central notions in the philosophy of language (reference, meaning, and truth, e.g.), the puzzles these notions give rise to, and the relevance of these notions to such questions as: What is language? How is communication possible? What is understanding? Is language rule-governed. | ||
Psychology
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| PSYC 311 | Human Cognition and the Brain. | 3 |
Human Cognition and the Brain. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. The course is an introduction to the field studying how human cognitive processes, such as perception, attention, language, learning and memory, planning and organization, are related to brain processes. The material covered is primarily based on studies of the effects of different brain lesions on cognition and studies of brain activity in relation to cognitive processes with modern functional neuroimaging methods. | ||
| PSYC 340 | Psychology of Language. | 3 |
Psychology of Language. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. A survey of issues in psycholinguistics, focusing on the nature and processing of language (e.g., how we understand speech sounds, words, sentences, and discourse). Also surveyed: language and thought, the biological foundations of language, and first language acquisition. | ||
| PSYC 341 | The Psychology of Bilingualism. | 3 |
The Psychology of Bilingualism. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. This course will examine issues in bilingualism, including second language acquisition in children and adults, critical period hypothesis, cognitive consequences and correlates of bilingualism, social psychological aspects of bilingualism, and bilingual education. | ||
| PSYC 433 | Cognitive Science. | 3 |
Cognitive Science. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. The multi-disciplinary study of cognitive science, exploring the computer metaphor of the mind as an information-processing system. Focus on levels of analysis, symbolic modeling, Turing machines, neural networks, as applied to topics such as reasoning, vision, decision-making, and consciousness. | ||
| PSYC 530 | Applied Topics in Deafness. | 3 |
Applied Topics in Deafness. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Covers fundamental topics in deafness (sensory, perceptual, cognitive, social, linguistic, education and health issues) from an applied psychological perspective. Lectures and seminar presentations plus field work involving ASL/LSQ. | ||
Statistics
Any course in statistics (from any department).