Linguistics Program

The program offers an MA degree, an undergraduate option with an Anthropology, English or Language major, and a Certificate of Accomplishment in ESL. The Linguistics Program offers an interdisciplinary education to students. The central goal in linguistics is to study, understand, and describe the details of individual languages: the sounds used by individual languages and the make-up of words, phrases and sentences. The understanding of linguistic principles is applied to a variety of fields, including language teaching, language therapy, communication, speech synthesis, and language preservation. The Linguistics Program at the University of Montana is the only program that offers an MA in Linguistics in the state of Montana.

Indigenous and Endangered Languages

The research focus of the program includes indigenous languages of North America.  Montana is the aboriginal home of speakers of languages that belong to four distinct language families: 1. Kutenai (isolate); 2. Flathead (Salish); 3 Cree, Blackfoot, Northern Cheyenne, and Gros Ventre (Algonquian); 4. Assiniboine, Sioux and Crow (Siouan).  Of the approximately six thousand languages currently spoken in the world, only about five percent are projected to survive into the 22nd century.  The Linguistics Program is committed to preserving and promoting the linguistic diversity of the region and the state.

Interdisciplinarity

The Linguistics Program is situated within the Department of Anthropology.  In offering its curriculum the Linguistics Program collaborates with Native American Studies, English, Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, Communication Studies, Philosophy, and the McNair Program.