Studying Linguistics at HKU
Linguistics is an option for you--
- if you enjoy learning languages and learning about languages
or are fascinated with some aspect of language,
- if you want to combine a scientific approach with an Arts or
Social Science subject, or
- if you are an Arts student with an analytic frame of mind.
Minors
A minor in General Linguistics shall consist of 30 credits of
second/third year Linguistics courses. As a prerequisite, students
are required to pass LING1001 Introduction to linguistics.
To be accepted for our majors, students must have completed satisfactorily
the first year course "Introduction to Linguistics". Other
non-majors who wish to take Linguistics courses in their second
and third years' studies will also be expected to have passed the
first year course.
Majors
The following B.A. majors and programmes are offered in the department
or in conjunction with other departments:
At the postgraduate level, the following programmes are offered
in the department or in collaboration with other departments:
Resources
The primary library resources in Linguistics are housed in the
University's Main Library. Books
and journal titles can be looked up easily through the Library's
computer catalogue system, Dragon, and articles may be searched
for through on-line resources such as the MLA Bibliography, the
LLBA (Language and Linguistic Behaviour Abstracts), and Linguistics
Abstracts.
The Department has a small library of reference works and linguistics
books. It has a well-equipped Phonetics laboratory for teaching
and research in Experimental Phonetics. There is also a Laboratory
for Research in Language Neuroscience and Cognition.
The Department's courses are enriched by seminar
presentations by guest lecturers, members of staff,
and postgraduate students in the department. Seminars are open to
the public and all students are encouraged to attend.
Research
A variety of research projects
are under way in the department, encompassing the fields of phonetics,
speech recognition, phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicology and
lexicography, language typology, language and literacy, sociolinguistics
and conversation analysis, corpus linguistics, child language acquisition,
pyscholinguistics, language and the human brain.
The department has established a particular concentration on linguistic
studies of Asian languages. A strong tradition of research in Cantonese
linguistics continues with new tools such as corpus linguistics
and language processing being brought to bear on the field. Current
research includes a Hong Kong Cantonese Corpus project, a project
on Cantonese speech understanding in conjunction with IBM, studies
of language development in Cantonese/English bilingual children
and studies in the field of language and neuroscience. Other projects
involve comparative studies of Cantonese in relation to Southeast
Asian and African languages as well as English, and the grammar
of Min dialects such as Chiu Chow.
Beyond the Asian focus, members of the department are conducting
studies on Dagaare and Akan, spoken in Ghana, Ndebele, spoken in
Zimbabwe, and European languages such as French, German, Norwegian,
Icelandic and Russian, as well as Latin and Classical Greek.
The Department seeks to attract qualified postgraduate research
students from Hong Kong, China and overseas with sufficient background
in linguistics. Postgraduate studentships or research assistantships,
research grants and international conference funding are available
to support their research.
Enquiries
Enquiries should be addressed to Department of Linguistics, The
University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong. Telephone:
(852) 39178606; E-mail: linguist@hkucc.hku.hk
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