Department of Linguistics

About the Department

Linguistics is a discipline that explores the structure of language, its role in human activity, and its relationship to the biological and psychological human organism. It is considered one of the humanities because it focuses on the relationship between human beings and language, but it is also an exact science because of its systematic explanation of the facts of language and its use of experimental methodology. 

One of the great strengths of our program is to offer a training that is both rigorous and broad, and which leads not only to graduate study in the language sciences, but to a wide range of related fields, among which language teaching, speech-language pathology, audiology, cognitive science, speech and language technologies, and information technology stand out in particular.

Our department boasts a number of research groups and well-equipped laboratories. We publish a journal, Ottawa Papers in Linguistics, in which the research of our students and others is circulated throughout Canada, the United States, Europe and the rest of the world. Join us!