master thesis topics in linguistics

Syntax and Semantics

• The Tok Pisin noun phrase
• Towards an investigation of socially-conditioned semantic variation
• Definite article reduction in a religious community of practice
• The definiteness effect in Chinese 'you'-existential constructions: A corpus based study
• Topics and pronouns in the clausal left periphery in Old English
• Scalar implicatures in polar (yes/no) questions
• Quantification, alternative semantics and phases
• The syntax and semantics of V2 – 'weil' in German 
• An analysis of Chinese quantifiers 'ge', 'dou' and 'quan' and their co-occurrence
• Distribution and licensing condititions of Negative Polarity Items in Mandarin Chinese
• The NP/DP Distinction in Slavic: A comparative approach
• A complex predicational analysis of the 'ba'-construction in Mandarin Chinese
• Two types of raising in Korean
• Serial verb constructions in Mandarin Chinese
• From Turncoats to Backstabbers:  How headedness and word order determine the productivity of agentive and instrumental compounding in English

Forensic Phonetics

• An Investigation into the Perceived Similarity of the Speech of Identical Twins and Same Sex Siblings
• Detecting Authenticity of Audio Files Compressed by Social Media Platforms
• Investigating Changes from Neutral to Soft and Whispered Speech and their Impact on Automatic Speaker Recognition
• The Effect of Anger and Fear on Forensic Authomatic Speaker Recognition System Performance
• The Impact of Face Coverings on Speech Comprehension and Perceptions of Speaker Attributes
• Tracking Linguistic Differences in the Ultrasound Images of the Tongue in Spoken and Silent Speech Conditions Using Pose Estimation

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• Personal interest : If feasible, concentrate your efforts on a topic that interests you personally (e.g., bilingual education; English and the immigrant community; history of the English language). Think creatively. Personal interest increases motivation, which in turn often predicts success.
• Brainstorm : Identify synonyms for major concepts (e.g., Applied Linguistics = Language Services). Those "keywords" will come in handy when searching databases such as JSTOR for journal articles about your topic.
• Mindmap : A concept or mindmap uses shape, color, and other visual cues to help researchers think through a research topic. Check out this video for a good example of a mindmap in action. Consult your smart phone's app store for free and low-cost mindmapping apps.
• Explore : Identify important linguists and disciplinary trends. Read, for example, about the careers of well-known linguists such as Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), Noam Chomsky (1928- ), or William Labov (1927- ); follow the trajectory of an important theory or school of thought such as generativism or universal grammar; and/or concentrate on developments in the field of linguistics during a particular decade such as the 1960s. You can do all of this and more using the sources listed on the Reference Shelf page of this libguide.
• Consult an Expert : Linguistics students must engage with the scholarly secondary literature. Why not begin with an expert who already knows that literature or can help you to identify it? Your professor or librarian can help you to choose a topic and suggest relevant readings.

Library-centric approaches to reviewing the literature and refining your research topic:

• Citation (or Footnote) Chasing : A popular research technique in which the bibliographies of works already located in a literature search (or assigned by your professor) are examined for additional sources containing further information. Books (monographs), journal articles, and scholarly encyclopedia articles all typically contain bibliographies. Footnote chasing is a favorite of many scholars but it is not the only or even most efficient method of reviewing the literature and choosing/narrowing your research topic. Although moderately time consuming, footnote chasing can pay huge dividends to the researcher.
• Consult Reference Works : Reference works list, index, summarize, or in some other way facilitate access to the primary literature of linguistics. Examples of important reference works in linguistics include the encyclopedias listed in the Reference Shelf and Find Articles and Journals pages of this guide.
• Abstracting and Indexing Databases (subset of Reference) : Abstracting and indexing databases are tertiary sources that provide bibliographic citations and/or abstracts of the literature of a discipline (e.g., LLBA for linguistics). Print indexes (and their online analogs) employ controlled vocabularies or subject headings to help researchers understand the nature of the content indexed and to efficiently pinpoint the most relevant material. See the Find Articles and Journals page of this guide for links to important indexes and databases in linguistics.
• Published Bibliographies (subset of Reference) : A bibliography is a systematic list of works written on a given subject, or that share one or more common characteristics of language, form, period, place of publication, author, and so on. A bibliography can be comprehensive, encompassing for example the entire discipline of linguistics, or selective, covering only the scholarly literature on a narrow aspect of second language acquisition. The Reference Shelf tab of this guide provides links to several important linguistics bibliographies.
• Browse the Secondary Literature : Browse the latest issue of a peer-reviewed linguistics journal. While this method is much more time consuming than searching abstracting and indexing databases, use it to identify recent disciplinary problems and debates. Find linguistics journals in the Find Articles and Journals page of this guide.

Source for definitions: ODLIS: Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science

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Doing a Master’s Dissertation in TESOL and Applied Linguistics

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Sedigh Mohammadi, Doing a Master’s Dissertation in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, ELT Journal , Volume 76, Issue 1, January 2022, Pages 157–159, https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccab075

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Completing a master’s dissertation is a daunting process for many students, as it involves accomplishing a series of complex tasks in a rather short period. These include planning, critical reading, synthesizing, researching, and writing. Students should also sustain ‘a coherent and extended argument, [which] is an immense challenge for any student writer; this challenge is magnified when writing in a language that is not one’s mother tongue’ ( Thompson 2013: 284). An additional challenge is that most books on writing dissertations offer a generic, one-size-fits-all approach, without focusing on a specific field. However, as Hyland (2016: 27) points out, ‘Disciplines [also] have different views of knowledge, different research practices, and different ways of seeing the world.’ This means that the content and organization of dissertations also differ from one field to another, and as a result discipline-specific guidelines are essential. Bitchener’s (2010) book, Writing an Applied Linguistics Thesis or Dissertation was an important contribution to the field, but since it concentrates only on the writing dimension of the dissertation, the field still lacked an A-to-Z guide for students. Doing a Master’s Dissertation in TESOL and Applied Linguistics addresses this gap. This highly practical resource provides concise step-by-step guidelines through the intricacies of planning, reading, researching, and writing a dissertation. It offers procedures, templates, examples, analyses, assessment criteria, activities, common mistakes, and frequently asked questions (FAQs), all drawn from Lindy Woodrow’s extensive experience in teaching and in supervising master’s dissertations.

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Quicklinks und sprachwechsel, main navigation, master thesis, table of contents, the master thesis, preparation, formal requirements, booking and deadlines, recommended reading.

Semester Awards

Archive of previous MA theses

The Master Thesis is a written piece of work written independently by the student and is supervised by a Professor or another member of staff holding at least a PhD degree. As a rule, the Master's thesis comprises 50 - 90 pages (approx. 29,000 - 52,000 words) and is graded.

The Master Thesis is usually supervised by a professor. Members of staff holding a doctoral degree are also allowed to supervise MA theses. Note, however, that they are not obliged to do so. 

Make sure to contact a potential supervisor prior to booking the MA thesis module online – ideally at the end of the preceding semester, but no later than: 

             August 5 for the fall semester      

             January 5 for the spring semester

Students are to agree on their topic with their supervisor in a timely manner. Further details pertaining to requirements specific to the respective field in which the student has chosen to write the thesis should be discussed with them. 

We strongly recommend that you write your MA thesis in the last semester and that you have successfully completed at least one seminar paper before starting your MA thesis.

The topic of the MA thesis can either be chosen freely or come from topics suggested by lecturers. The language in which the thesis is written is determined according to the agreement with the supervisor. It should be noted, however, that if a teaching diploma is being pursued, it is advisable to choose the topic for the MA thesis in a way that it will also be recognized for the teaching diploma (for details, see section Lehrdiplom für Maturitätsschulen ). 

The topic of the MA thesis can either be chosen freely or come from topics suggested by lecturers. The language in which the thesis is written is determined according to the agreement with the supervisor. It should be noted, however, that if a teaching diploma is being pursued, it is advisable to choose the topic for the MA thesis in a way that it will also be recognized for the teaching diploma (for details, see section Lehrdiplom an Maturitätsschulen . 

The recommendation for the formatting of your MA thesis is as follows:

• Font: Times New Roman
• Font size: 12pt
• Line spacing: 1.5
• Margin: left/right 2.5cm, top/bottom 2cm
• Justification: justified with automatic hyphenation

Please discuss specifics with your supervisor.

Visit the download area for template covers and the Selbständigkeitserklärung  under General Guidelines and Templates .

The MA thesis must be booked online during the  module booking period . Click on “Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences” to see the current deadlines as well as the cancellation deadlines. 

The  latest possible submission dates  for the MA thesis are:

           December 1 for the fall semester

          June 1 for the spring semester

General information from the Faculty of Arts can be found here . 

We strongly recommend that you write your MA thesis in the last semesters and that you have successfully completed at least one seminar paper before starting your MA thesis.

Supervision Agreement

Once you have booked the MA thesis module, please download this Supervision Agreement (PDF, 78 KB) and have it signed by your supervisor and you. Send it back to [email protected]

Alison Wray, &  Aileen Bloomer. 2012. Projects in Linguistics and Language Studies: A Practical Guide to Researching Language. New York/London: Routledge.

Sunderland, Jane. 2010. Research questions in linguistics. In Lisa Litosseliti, ed. Research Methods in Linguistics. London: Continuum.

The semester awards, with a value of CHF 600.–, are granted by the faculties for outstanding scholarly work. A total of 30 awards are distributed according to the size of the student body at the individual faculties. The awards are presented by the President of UZH.

Two of our students have won a semester award, congratulations! 

• "Shifting Pronouns and Disruptive Technology: Studying Singular ‚They‘ with GPT- 3" by Carlos Hartmann in HS22 (Digital Linguistics)
• "Mouse Tracking for Reading (MoTR): A New Incremental Processing Paradigm" by Cui Ding in HS23 (Digital Linguistics)

You will fine a list of MA thesis titles written by our students. This is not an exhaustive list; we only publish with permission of the author. This list is meant to give you an idea of what other students have written their MA thesis on. Some of the theses are published on ZORA.

If you wish to make your own MA thesis available on ZORA please contact our study advisor .

Weiterführende Informationen

«my thesis in 5 minutes».

«My Thesis in 5 Minutes» is an informal  event where we talk and answer your questions about writing a Master's Thesis in the Linguistics program. Some students will briefly talk about their MA thesis writing process.

Who : Students from the Linguistics program who either like to share where they are in their thesis writing process or those that are seeking more information.  When : Friday, 19th of April, 2024 from 10:30-12:00 Where : Cafeteria, Room AND 2.51 in Oerlikon. Andreasstrasse 15, 8050 Oerlikon

For registration or if you have questions, please contact Lorena Schneider,  [email protected]

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Home > Dissertations, Theses & Capstones Projects by Program > Linguistics Master's Theses

Linguistics Master's Theses

Theses from 2024 2024.

Consonant (De)gradation in Ingrian? , Andrea M. Harrison

How Do We Learn What We Cannot Say? , Daniel Yakubov

Theses from 2023 2023

Applying Linguistics to the Adult ESOL Classroom: A Guide for ESOL Teachers in Community Centers , Lenore Costello

Towards Interpretable Machine Reading Comprehension with Mixed Effects Regression and Exploratory Prompt Analysis , Luca Del Signore

Neural Network vs. Rule-Based G2P: A Hybrid Approach to Stress Prediction and Related Vowel Reduction in Bulgarian , Maria Karamihaylova

Topics for He but not for She: Quantifying and Classifying Gender Bias in the Media , Tyler J. Lanni

Language of the Enemy: Impacts of the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War on Linguistic and National Identity Paradigms in Ukraine , Julia Panter

A Sentiment Analysis of "Filipinx" on Twitter Using a Multinomial Naïve Bayes Classification Model , Clarisse Taboy

Pronunciation Ambiguities in Japanese Kanji , Wen Zhang

Theses from 2022 2022

The Realization of the Null Subject Parameter in Greek-American Children and Adults: Anaphora Resolution Patterns in Ambiguous Sentential Structures , Maria Elekidou

Does a Neural Network Inflect Spanish Verbs in a Human-Like Way? , Elizabeth Garza

A Study of Entrainment in Speech as a Possible Predictor of Perceived Trust , Mariana Graterol Fuenmayor

Gender-Informed Features of Film Reviews: A Statistical Linguistic Analysis , Matthew Kadish

A Machine Learning Approach to Text-Based Sarcasm Detection , Lara I. Novic

Covert Determiners in Appalachian English Narrative Declarative Sentences , William Oliver

From Sesame Street to Beyond: Multi-Domain Discourse Relation Classification with Pretrained BERT , Isaac R. Raff

Methods in Reverse Transliteration of English Loanwords in Japanese , Yuying Ren

Predicting Stress in Russian using Modern Machine-Learning Tools , John Schriner

Examining the Linguistic Ideology "Throaty Sounds Are Bad for Performers": The History of Negative Attitudes Towards Glottal Stops and Laryngealization in English , Dayle M. Towarnicky

Expanding the Pronominal Account of Tense: A Reexamination of the Double Access Reading in English , Brynne E. Wilkinson

Theses from 2021 2021

Evaluating the Role of Gender in Dementia-Related Language Deficiencies , Kelsey Bourque

Predicting Stock Price Movements Using Sentiment and Subjectivity Analyses , Andrew Kirby

From an Art to a Science: Features and Methodology in Computational Authorship Identification , Jonathan I. Manczur

The Production of Russian Vowels /i/ and /ɨ/ by Russian-English Bilingual Children , Evgeniya Maryutina

When Misclassification Is Misgendering: Gender Prediction in the Context of Trans Identities , Sean Miller

A Computational Study in the Detection of English–Spanish Code-Switches , Yohamy C. Polanco

Detection and Morphological Analysis of Novel Russian Loanwords , Yulia Spektor

Computational Representation of Russian Aspectual Morphology with a Focus on Perfective Prefixation , Natalia Tyulina

Theses from 2020 2020

From the Unspoken to the Verbalized: Different Ways of Communication and their Relationship to Culture in a Traditional Lakota Narrative "Ikto na wičhá ha kiŋ”, or “Ikto and the Racoon Skin” , Liliana R. Boladz-Nekipelov

Does the Word "Chien" Bark? Representation Learning in Neural Machine Translation Encoders , Emily Campbell

Processing Coercion in a First, Non-Dominant Language: Mandarin-English Heritage Bilinguals , Christina N. Dadurian

Doing Away With Defaults: Motivation for a Gradient Parameter Space , Katherine Howitt

Genderlects in Social Media , Alina Korovatskaya

Inferring Research Fields in Administrative Records Using Text Data , Ekaterina Levitskaya

Tones in Shupamem Reduplication , Magdalena Markowska

Cot in the Act: Ethnicity and Age Affects Phonemic Perception of the Low-Back Merger in New York City English , Omar Ortiz

Acquisition Orders and Instructional Sequences: A Case Study of Russian Textbooks , Olga Ozhiganova

On the Temporal Interpretation of Epistemic Modals: Evidence from Palestinian Arabic , Alaa M. Sharif

Testing the Perceptual Magnet Effect in Monolinguals and Bilinguals , Michael C. Stern

Phonologically-Informed Speech Coding for Automatic Speech Recognition-based Foreign Language Pronunciation Training , Anthony J. Vicario

Ghost Peppers: Using Ensemble Models to Detect Professor Attractiveness Commentary on RateMyProfessors.com , Angie Waller

Mitigating Gender Bias in Neural Machine Translation Using Counterfactual Data , Alan Wong

Knowledge of the Present Perfect by Albanian/English Bilinguals , Erjon Xholi

Analysis of PRO-drop Errors in L2 English by L1 Spanish Speakers , Marcos R. Ynoa

Theses from 2019 2019

The Effects of Language Background and Foreign Accent on Listening Comprehension , Sita Carraturo

Demographic Factors as Domains for Adaptation in Linguistic Preprocessing , Sara Morini

Generative Adversarial Networks and Word Embeddings for Natural Language Generation , Robert D. Schultz Jr

Heritage Speaker and Late Bilingual L2 Relative Clause Processing and Language Dominance Effects , LeeAnn S. Stevens

The Perception of Mandarin Tones in "Bubble" Noise by Native and L2 Listeners , Mengxuan Zhao

Theses from 2018 2018

Describing Doggo-Speak: Features of Doggo Meme Language , Jennifer Bivens

Purepecha Aspirated Consonants and Their Phonetic Variants , Lluvia Camacho Cervantes

The Social Perception of Three Features of New York City English , Giacomo Castronovo Jr.

Speech Perception in “Bubble” Noise: Korean Fricatives and Affricates By Native and Non-native Korean Listeners , Jiyoung Choi

English Influence on L2 Speakers’ Production of Palatalization and Velarization , Jennifer C. Gabriele

Recursive Neural Networks for Semantic Sentence Representation , Liam S. Geron

Input and Output in the Acquisition of Russian as a Heritage Language During the Third Year of Life , Ekaterina V. Kistanova

Intergroup Variability in Personality Recognition , Arundhati Sengupta

Revisiting Lockhart: A Case for a Conditional Operator , Eric J. Tsai

Theses from 2017 2017

Aspects of Quantifier Float in Thai , Khanin Chaiphet

Spatial Prepositions in Spanish , Carolina Fraga

From Rochel to Rose and Mendel to Max: First Name Americanization Patterns Among Twentieth-Century Jewish Immigrants to the United States , Jason H. Greenberg

A Sentiment Analysis of Language & Gender Using Word Embedding Models , Ellyn Rolleston Keith

Contesting Victimhood: A Linguistic and Legal Anthropological Analysis of Defendant Experiences in New York’s Human Trafficking Intervention Courts , Mark T. Romig

ES-ESA: An Information Retrieval Prototype Using Explicit Semantic Analysis and Elasticsearch , Brian D. Sloan

A Discussion of Delimitative in Mandarin Chinese , Qi Zhang

Theses from 2016 2016

Infixer: A Method for Segmenting Non-Concatenative Morphology in Tagalog , Steven R. Butler

Processing Filler-Gap Dependencies in Mandarin Chinese: An Effect of Language Exposure? , Stanley Chen

Nondescript: A Web Tool to Aid Subversion of Authorship Attribution , Robin Davis

Utilizing Linguistic Context To Improve Individual and Cohort Identification in Typed Text , Adam Goodkind

An Evaluation of POS Taggers for the CHILDES Corpus , Rui Huang

Event Parsing In Narrative: Trials And Tribulations Of Archaic English Fairy Tales , Rebecca Lovering

An ERP Study of Sensory-Linguistic Processing in the Context of ASD Research , Larissa R. Miller

An Examination of Cross-Domain Authorship Attribution Techniques , Maxwell B. Schwartz

Voicing the Other: Mock AAVE on Social Media , Hanna L. Smokoski

Theses from 2015 2015

/n/:/r/ Correspondences in Albanian Dialects: Understanding the n>r Sound Change , Katie Albany

Techniques for Automatic Normalization of Orthographically Variant Yiddish Texts , Yakov Peretz Blum

Vocabulary Through Affixes and Word Families - A Computer-Assisted Language Learning Program for Adult ELL Students , Magdalena Kieliszek

Syntactic Constraints and Social Uses of Greek-English Intrasentential Codeswitching , Despina Stefanou Malliaroudakis

Obstruent Voicing and Tone in Siklis Gurung , Danielle Ronkos

The Incidence and Evolution of Palatalized Consonants in Latvian , Linda Zalite

Theses from 2014 2014

The Influence of Pseudo-relatives on Attachment Preferences in Spanish , David Branco-Moreno

The Inner Workings of Text Summarization Systems , Hope Cotton

HUU-FA THESIS DAT?: A Syntactic Analysis of Possessive Jamaican Creole Possessive WH-elements , Toni Ashlie Foster

Canvas: A fast and accurate geometric sentence alignment system using lexical cues within complex misalignment settings , Hussein M. Ghaly

Representational Implications of the Phonologization of Contour Tones , Benjamin Kirkland Macaulay

Echolocation: Using Word-Burst Analysis to Rescore Keyword Search Candidates in Low-Resource Languages , Justin Richards

Some complexities in English article use and acquisition , Victoria Somogyi

Understanding Doubly Center-Embedded Sentences Through Contrastive Focus , Ashley Caroline Thorne

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Prof. Dr. Bettina Braun Zinn

Phonetic aspects of gender-neutral speech in German

Many speakers who use gender-neutral speech in German produce a glottal stop /ʃtʊdɛntʔɪn/. In this project you will compare the realization of gender-neutral speech for different speakers (those who find this distinction important and those who don’t). You will also investigate how the speakers deal with forms in which the stress pattern is different between the male and female forms (e.g., Professor vs. Professorin)

Prerequisites:

• knowledge of praat or another speech processing software
• knowledge of statistics

Language: 

German or English

Intonational meaning in one-word utterances (with R. Eckardt)

In mother-child interaction, mothers utter a whole range of semantically empty one-word utterances (e.g., hm?). In this project you will analyse an annotated corpus of spoken Germna mother-child interaction to classify the pragmatic content (intent) of these one-word utterances and to relate their function to intonational form to develop a model of intonational meaning.

• knowledge of pragmatics

Literature: Grice, M., Baumann, S., & Benzmüller, R. (2005). German Intonation in Autosegmental-Metrical Phonology. In J. Sun-Ah (Ed.), Prosodic Typology. The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing (pp. 55-83). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The role of intonation on lexical stress perception (with T. Rathcke)

There are studies showing that participants perceive high-pitched syllables as stressed (this happens, for instance, in a rising intonation pattern such as “Peter?” where the low-pitched stressed syllable is less often detected correctly than in a declarative utterance with a falling f0-contour. In this project you will use rhythm-beats to probe participants’ stress perception in different intonation contours.

• knowledge of psycholinguistics

Literature: Zahner, K., Kutscheid, S., & Braun, B. (2019). Alignment of f0 peak in different pitch accent types affects perception of metrical stress. Journal of Phonetics, 74 , 75-95.

Prosody vs. syntax in the interpretation of questions as rhetorical or information-seeking (with N. Dehé)

Previous research has shown that listeners can use prosodic information (duration, voice quality, intonation) to decide whether a question is intended as rhetorical or information-seeking question (all else being equal). In this project you will investigate how this prosodic information compares to information from other linguistic areas, e.g. syntactic structure, use of particles

Literature: Braun, B., Dehé, N., Neitsch, J., Wochner, D., & Zahner, K. (2018). The prosody of rhetorical and information-seeking questions in German. Language and Speech 62(4), 779–807 . Kharaman, M., Xu, M., Eulitz, C. & Braun, B. (2019). The processing of prosodic cues to rhetorical question interpretation: Psycholinguistic and neurolinguistics evidence.  Proceedings of Interspeech . Graz, Austria.

The perception of bias in polar questions (with M. Romero)

Previous research has shown that speakers mark their own bias preferentially via word order in German (Gibt es nicht einen Bus? vs. Gibt es keinen Bus?), while English speakers make more use of prosody (in particular the final rise). In this project you test the perception and identification of speaker bias and test the roles of prosody and syntax therein.

Literature: Arnhold, A., Braun, B. & Romero, M. (2020). Aren’t prosody and syntax marking bias in questions? Language and Speech. Online first publication   https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830920914315

The marking of rhetorical question in Swiss German: Syntactic and prosodic cues (with N. Dehé)

Rhetorical questions (RQs) may be signaled by lexical or syntactic cues and/or by prosody. Regarding the prosodic marking of RQs, previous research on German has shown that tonal targets are aligned later in rhetorical wh -questions than in neutral wh -questions. Swiss German is an interesting test case for the marking of RQs as tonal alignment seems to occur later in Swiss German than in Standard German. Moreover, Swiss German employs various lexical cues to convey pragmatic meaning. In this project you will test whether Swiss German speakers use syntactic/lexical cues and/or prosody to mark a question as rhetorical. If prosody is a cue, you will further study tonal alignment patterns for the disambiguation of the two illocution types in more detail.

• knowledge of intonation
• basic knowledge of syntax

Literature: Braun, B., Dehé, N., Neitsch, J., Wochner, D., & Zahner, K. (2018). The prosody of rhetorical and information-seeking questions in German. Language and Speech 62(4), 779–807 . Leemann, A. (2012). Swiss German intonation patterns. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Prof. Dr. Bernhard Brehmer Für die Themen für die MA-Arbeiten wenden Sie sich bitte direkt an Herrn Bernhard Brehmer. Please contact directly Mr. Bernhard Brehmer to determine the subject of your MA-Thesis.

Prof. Dr. Miriam Butt

Grammar Development

Develop a Grammar Fragment for a language using LFG/XLE.

Framing and Argumentation

Computationally analyze linguistic strategies involved in framing and argumentation. Other possible topics are the automatic detection of hate speech or the content of political manifestos.

Computational Morphological Analysis

Develop a computational analysis for morphophonological phenomena in a language using Finite-State Morphology.

Computational Semantics

Work on a topic within Natural Language Unterstanding: the automatic analysis semantic content.

Artificial Intelligence

Develop small AI systems. These could be Chatbots or systems involving machine learning from texts for a given task like text generation or classification or clustering of texts/phenomena.

Theoretical Linguistics

I am happy to supervise topics on the following: case, complex predicates, lexical semantics, grammar architecture, including the prosody-syntax-semantics/pragmatics interface. My area of specialization is South Asian languages, but I am happy to do other languages as well.

Historical Linguistics

Understanding language change, particularly with respect to case or auxiliary formation. This can be done purely from a general linguistics perspective or be combined with computational approaches (corpus linguistics and/or visual analytics).

Emotion-evoking language in Spanish political manifestos

In this thesis, you will examine the instances of emotion and emotion-evoking language in Spanish political manifestos and speeches. The aim is to create word lists that will help us in the analysis of emotional language in Spanish texts. 

Required skills:

• knowledge of Spanish; no programming skills required

Prof. Dr. Nicole Dehé

Prosody vs. syntax in the interpretation of questions as rhetorical or information-seeking (with B. Braun Zinn)

The intonation of faroese (with c. ulbrich).

Literature on the intonation of Faroese is scarce, except for some short and anecdotal descriptions in Lockwood (1977) and Árnason (2011). Speech data (from a map task study carried out in 2019) are available for analysis. Prerequisites: - Knowledge of Praat, some experience with intonational annotation / analysis - Interest in Faroese Literature: Árnason, Kristján. 2011. The Phonology of Icelandic and Faroese. Oxford University Press. Lockwood, W. B. 1977. An Introduction to Modern Faroese (3rd printing). Tórshavn: Føroya Skúlabókagrunnur.

Topics related to ditransitives in Insular Scandinavian

The objective of your thesis will be to explore important issues relating to ditransitive verbs in Insular Scandinavian. The project that your thesis will be related to focused on three main issues: (a) inversion of the two objects (DO-IO orders in active clauses and theme passives), (b) the morphosyntax of ditransitive verbs (different cases and DPs vs. PPs) and related syntactic issues, and (c) the scope possibilities for the internal arguments of ditransitive verbs. Data have been elicited in a series of experimental studies at the University of Iceland, ready for analysis. If you are interested, we will contact colleagues in Iceland and discuss use of the data as well as a specific thesis topic.

Prof. Dr. Regine Eckardt

Ich betreue Abschlussarbeiten im Bereich Semantik, Pragmatik und Sprachgeschichte. Sie können theoretische Arbeiten, Literaturvergleichende Arbeiten oder empirische Studien anstreben. Hier ist eine Auswahl an exemplarischen Themen. Für Ihre eigenen Vorschläge bin ich immer offen.

Most topics can also be researched for English, and in English. See me in my office hours talk about your ideas and interests.

Perspektivierung und perspektivierende Ausdrücke

Mit perspektivierenden Ausdrücken wird die Meinung eines Sprechers wiedergegeben. Es gibt viele Formen der Perspektivierung: geschmacklich ( gut, lecker, ekelhaft ), emotional ( leider, gottlob ), epistemisch ( wohl, vielleicht ).

Da viele davon noch nicht genauer beschrieben wurden, können hier viele Einzelfallstudien durchgeführt werden..

Ein weiterer Aspekt perspektivierender Ausdrücke ist ihre Funktion in Medientexten. Welche Art von Mitteilung wird perspektiviert? Welche Perspektiven werden vermittelt?

Form und Funktion rhetorischer Fragen.

• Datenbezogen: in welchen Texten und Medien werden rhetorische Fragen vermehrt verwendet?
• Form: Wie werden rhetorische Fragen im Deutschen markiert? (Negativ-Polare Elemente, Negation, Partikeln, Adverbien usw.)
• Funktion: Kann jede beliebige Frage auch als rhetorische Frage verwendet werden? Wie sehen adäquate Verwendungskontexte für rhetorische Fragen aus?

Emphatische Negation in Zeitungstexten

• Pragmatik von negativ-polaren Elementen
• Einordnung weiterer Negationsformen des Deutschen in die Theorie: Niemals, nicht einmal, nicht ein einzige(s) … und ihre Verwendung in Zeitungstexten
• Verwendung und Funktion von von wegen!

Präteritumsschwund im Süddeutschen

In den süddeutschen Dialekten sind die morphologischen Formen des Präteritums fast völlig verschwunden; sie werden durch analytische Formen im Perfekt ersetzt.

• welche bedeutung hat in diesem System das Doppelperfekt ( Peter hat das Buch gelesen gehabt )?
• Überprüfung von Quellen des 16. Jahrhunderts auf die Verwendung von Perfekt / Präteritum
• Überprüfung von Quellen aus dem Bereich der Hanse auf die Verwendung des Perfekts / Präteritums im 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts
• eventuell für Romanisten: Quellen aus dem Norditalienischen Raum aus dem 14. Jahrhundert auf die Verwendung von Vergangenheitsformen hin überprüfen.

Argumente und Scheinargumente

Erarbeitung von fallacies (= Scheinargumenten) anhand von Lehrbüchern, und eine empirische Studie zu der Frage: Welche fallacies kommen bei (online-)Debatten am häufigsten vor? (Zur Eingrenzung empfiehlt sich ein Fokus auf Debatten zu einem bestimmten Thema, z.B. nur über Migration, nur über Corona, …)

Texte und Medien

Wie wird in Texten die Perspektive des Autors indirekt spachlich vermittelt? Wie setzen Journalisten subjektive Prädikate ein, um einen gemeinsamen Glaubenshintergrund zu suggerieren?

Semantik von Adjektiven

Die Natur von A+N-Komposita im Russischen: Zur Semantik von A + N – Phrasen im Russischen. Im Deutschen bedeutet rote Socke dasselbe wie „ist rot und ist eine Socke“. Im Russischen scheint es A+N-Verbindungen zu geben, in denen das Adjektiv nicht einfach zur N-Bedeutung dazukommt. Was ist die Semanitk dieser A+N-Verbindungen? Gibt es solche Beispiele auch in anderen Sprachen (z.B. „blauer Brief“)? Wo ist die Grenze zwischen kompositionaler und konventioneller Bedeutung?

Indirekte Sprechakte: Russisch und Deutsch im Vergleich

Befehle und auch manche Fragen können face-threatening acts sein. Oft wird behauptet, dass Sprecher auf indirekte Sprechakte ausweichen, um den FTA abzumildern. Ist diese Strategie empirische belegbar? Ist sie kulturspezifisch?

Prof. Dr. Carsten Eulitz

Underspecification of phonological features in the mental lexicon

In this thesis, you will be conducting an EEG study using a component of the event-related activity, called MMN, to generalize MMN effects demonstrating the underspecification of phonological features in the mental lexicon. This topic is conditional to the re-opening of the EEG lab. Required skills: Experimental linguistics and neurolinguistics, ideally experience with EEG measurements and data analyses Language of the thesis: English or German

Pre-attentive recognition of the language mode and nativeness in bilingual speakers

In this thesis, you will be conducting an EEG study using a component of the event-related activity, called MMN, to investigate the pre-attentive recognition of the language mode of bilingual speakers while producing CV syllables in the L1 or the L2 as well as the nativeness of their productions. This topic is conditional to the re-opening of the EEG lab. Required skills: Experimental linguistics and neurolinguistics, ideally experience with EEG measurements and data analyses Language of the thesis: English or German

You can come to me with ideas about projects on neurolinguistics topics. Language of the thesis: English or German

Juniorprof. Dr. Diego Frassinelli

Automatic generation of behavioral measures using Distributional Semantic information

In this thesis, you will use regression methods to predict (extra)linguistic information (e.g., behavioral norms like concreteness, valency, arousal) using distributional semantic representations. The main focus of this project is to identify the type of linguistic and non-linguistic information available in distributional representations and understand how to access this type of information. Required Skills: Understanding of distributional semantics; Understanding and running correlation and regression studies; Good knowledge of Python or R. Language of the thesis: English only

Investigating Multimodal Distributional Semantics

In this thesis, you will use existing multimodal distributional representations (e.g., visual vectors) in combination with purely linguistic vector representations to understand how information coming from multiple modalities can be combined to solve traditional tasks from lexical and distributional semantics. Required Skills: Understanding of distributional semantics; Understanding and running correlation and regression studies; Good knowledge of Python. Language of the thesis: English only

Building Multimodal Distributional Representations

In this thesis, you will build visual vectors using complex neural networks and test such representations on traditional tasks from lexical and distributional semantics. The main question in this project is the following: does the quality and type of pictures used to build such vectors significantly affect the final representation? Required Skills: Understanding of distributional semantics; Understanding and running correlation and regression studies; Very good knowledge of Python; good knowledge of neural networks. Language of the thesis: English only

You can come to me with ideas about projects that use corpus linguistic methods and distributional semantics to solve specific tasks. Language of the thesis: English only

Prof. Dr. Georg A. Kaiser Für die Themen für die MA-Arbeiten wenden Sie sich bitte direkt an Herrn George Kaiser. Please contact directly Mr. Georg Kaiser to determine the subject of your MA-Thesis.

Prof. Dr. Tanja Kupisch Für die Themen für die MA-Arbeiten wenden Sie sich bitte direkt an Frau Tanja Kupisch. Please contact directly Ms. Tanja Kupisch to determine the subject of your MA-Thesis.

Prof. Dr. Theo Marinis

Language policies in multilingual cities

The aim of the project is identify what language policies are in place in countries with large multilingual populations in Europe and beyond.

Language policies in Konstanz as an international city – the view of the Konstanz citizens

This aim of this project is to identify through a survey the needs of the citizens of Konstanz in terms of the language policies they would like to be implemented in the future in Konstanz. "Language policies in multilingual cities-2 and "Language policies in Konstanz as an international city – the view of the Konstanz citizens" are closely linked together.

Effects of Covid19 on children’s language development

The aim of this project is to find out through a survey with parents their perceptions about how social distancing has affected their children’s language development.

Evaluating flyers from the Centre for Multilingualism

As part of the Ringvorlesung students are developing material for families and professionals. This project will evaluate the material through questionnaires and interviews with parents, professionals, people working in local authorities

Any other topic related to language development

Processing of cognates in english-german bilinguals (to be supervised with elisabeth süß).

The aim of the project is to study the effect of lexical stress on cognate production. While cognates are produced faster and more accurately than non-cognates (cognate facilitation effect (CFE)), it is unclear if and how lexical stress affects the CFE. A production experiment will be conducted to fill this research gap by testing German-English bilinguals on a picture naming task in both German and English. The pictures will depict non-cognates, cognates with stress overlap, and cognates with stress mismatch.

Pronoun resolution in bi-/multilingual children (to be supervised with Angelika Golegos)

The aim of this project is to study how children produce and comprehend pronouns. Pronouns as referential expressions are crucial in everyday communication. The target like use of pronouns is considered to be a demanding task that costs a long developmental progress. It is little known about the strategies monolingual children are applying for producing and interpreting pronouns and even fewer studies investigate bilingual children strategies. In this project we address the question of pronoun use and interpretation by applying various tasks, e.g., story retelling, pronoun judgment task.

Irony comprehension in children (to be supervised with P10 project)

The aim of the project is to compare the comprehension of irony in monolingual (German) and bilingual children with Italian as a heritage language. Several tests will be used to assess the participants’ ability to understand irony, general cognitive abilities, and Theory of Mind (ToM). ToM is the ability to make inferences about other people’s beliefs, intentions, and states of mind. Your two objectives will be 1) to find out potential correlations between different tasks (within participants), and 2) to investigate two different dimensions of language acquisition (monolingual vs bilingual).

[Knowledge of Italian is not necessary; if present, the project can also include the heritage language.]

Irony comprehension – comparing native speakers and late learners of German (to be supervised with P10 project)

How do adults who learn German as a second language perform in Irony Comprehension tasks? Are there differences between groups with a different L1 (e.g., Italian vs Japanese)? In this project, you will be able to compare how Italian learners of German and another group of late learners perform in an Irony Comprehension task. The L1 of the second group of late learners can be chosen based on your linguistic experience.

Rhetorical questions in German and (a language of your choice) (to be supervised with P10 project)

The aim of the project is to test two groups of monolingual speakers, speakers of German and speakers of another language. The linguistic phenomenon under investigation is rhetorical questions, which involve different linguistic cues in different languages (syntax, lexicon, prosody). There will be three main experiments (perception, comprehension, production) and some additional tasks. Your objective will be to find out which cues trigger rhetorical interpretation in different languages.

Rhetorical questions in German monolinguals and Italian heritage speakers (to be supervised with P10 project)

The aim of the project is to compare heritage speakers of Italian and monolingual speakers of German on rhetorical questions which involve different linguistic cues in different languages (syntax, lexicon, prosody). There will be three main experiments (perception, comprehension, production) and some additional tasks. Your objective will be 1) to find out which cues trigger rhetorical interpretation in German, and 2) to investigate two different dimensions of language acquisition (monolingual vs bilingual).

Prof. Dr. Tamara Rathcke

The role of the media in interpersonal accommodation and sound change

Prof. Dr. Tamara Rathcke (with Prof.. Dr Theo Marinis) The role of media in interpersonal accommodation and sound change has been controversially debated, with compelling evidence yet to be provided. In this project, the role of media engagement will be examined and compared between L1 and L2 speakers of English. This work will inform both sociolinguistic theory and second language acquisition models.

• Understanding of the posits of accommodation theory
•  Readiness to learn new technical skills
•  Basic knowledge of statistical inference

Literature: J Stuart-Smith, G Pryce, C Timmins, B Gunter (2013). Television can also be a factor in language change: Evidence from an urban dialect. Language, 501-536.

Interpersonal accommodation during speed dating

Speed dating is one of the contexts that allows us to study verbal and non-verbal accommodation in highly relevant contexts. The time that speed-daters spend in each other’s company is very short, and what they say is often less important than how they say it. This project will study if and how communicative accommodation can explain and predict interpersonal attraction during speed dating. The data for this project was recorded at the Centre for General Linguistics in Berlin in mid-October, and is available in German.

• Good command of Praat or another speech processing software
• Basic knowledge of statistical inference

Literature:

Giles, H., & Ogay, T. (2007). Communication Accommodation Theory. In B. B. Whaley & W. Samter (Eds.), Explaining communication: Contemporary theories and exemplars (p. 293–310). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

Prosodic interfaces between language and music

If music/singing is your thing, you may want to consider a dissertation topic on shared structures of music and language. Both are uniquely human abilities, and their shared cognitive underpinnings have been controversially debated for quite some time. You can take up different stances on the issue at hand, but a potential project involves the study of the so-called “speech-to-song illusion”, an illusory perception of singing in speech. The effect has been documented in many intonation languages but is limited (if at all present) in tonal languages. There is also quite large, to date poorly understood individual variation in the susceptibility to the effect. You can run this experiment with your own data, or use existing recordings. Prerequisites:

• Rock-solid knowledge of acoustic-phonetic concepts
• Understanding of key issues in speech and language processing

Falk, S., Rathcke, T. and Dalla Bella, S. (2014). When Speech Sounds Like Music. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance [Online] 40:1491-1506.

Perceptions of charisma in speech

We can easily say who we perceive as charismatic, but it is more difficult for us to say why. Some previous research has shown that for a person to radiate charisma, the content of their message is not as relevant as the way the message is delivered. If this fuels some research interest in you, the topic can be studied in different cultures and languages. An existing database of speeches given by British politicians during Brexit campaigns can also be used.

Rosenberg, A., & Hirschberg, J. (2009). Charisma perception from text and speech. Speech Communication, 51(7), 640–655.

Prof. Dr. Maribel Romero

Alternative Questions

Alternative questions like Is the baby awake or asleep? are realized using a wealth of different surface cues in different languages –prosodic, morpho-syntactic, lexical– and have special semantic and pragmatic properties. This makes the mapping from surface form to utterance meaning in this construction particularly interesting from a cross-linguistic point of view.

• How are alternative questions realized in less studied languages?
• What is their distribution in embedded environments?
• What is their distribution in matrix environments, i.e., do they have special discourse restrictions?

Biased Questions

There are many ways to ask one and the same question. Compare: (i) Is Amy at home? , (ii) Is Amy not at home? , (iii) Isn’t Amy at home? , (iv) Amy is at home? , (v) Amy is at home, isn’t she? . While some of these forms are neutral, others express some degree of bias towards or against the prejacent proposition ‘that Amy is at home’.

• How exactly do these forms differ from each other in terms of semantic/pragmatic behavior?
• What impact does prosody have in polar questions like (i)-(iii)? [Together with Prof. Bettina Braun]
• What readings do Rising Declaratives like (iv) allow in your native language?
• Besides a tag question form like (v), does your native language have other tag question forms? What are their semantic-pragmatic properties?

Quantifier meaning and semantic universals

Crosslinguistically, the meaning of lexical quantifiers –e.g., ‘every’, ‘some’, ‘no’, ‘most’,… – is known to obey a number of mathematical properties, including extension, isomorphism and conservativity. Recent efforts in Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy and Linguistics strive to derive these universal properties from (i) learnability considerations (using neural networks), (ii) the simplicity/informativeness trade-off and (iii) properties of logical operators and/or of natural language. For each such universal property:

• What explanation is best?
• Can several competing explanations be tested experimentally?
• If a particular reading of a specific quantifier in your native language seems to violate that universal property, can this reading be derived otherwise within the grammar of that particular language?

Tense and Aspect (with M. Butt)

Languages differ in how their tense and aspect paradigms are structured and what meaning distinctions they convey. For a given language, one can develop a grammar fragment on tense or aspect in LFG/XLE.

Discourse particles

Expressions like German schon and bloss or English totally and even , etc. often live a double life in the grammar: as adverbial elements contributing to the propositional content of the sentence (e.g., in The glass is totally full ) or as speech acts modifiers fine-tuning the illocutionary act performed (e.g., in You should totally click on that link ).

• Does the speech act use have any syntactic/semantic/pragmatic distribution requirements? If so, what is the underlying motivation for them?
• Can we pin down the content of the speech act reading with the help of experimental methodology?
• How should the speech act reading be theoretically modelled?
• How do the two readings –the propositional meaning and the speech act meaning– relate to each other?

Different attitude verbs –e.g. think , know , wonder — select for different types of complement clauses –e.g., that -clauses vs. interrogative clauses, indicative vs. subjunctive clauses, only V-final clauses vs. also V2 clauses. What guides this selection in each particular language? And can general semantic properties be identified that guide this selection cross-linguistically?

Meaning in Multilingualism (with T. Marinis or T. Kupisch)

What happens with the meaning of functional items –e.g., pronominal reference, definite and indefinite article, tense/aspect/mood morphology—in a multilingual setting? Do we observe transfer in their acquisition? Is there delay or acceleration in the acquisition process?

Open topic in Semantics and/or Pragmatics

If you have some ideas or interest on any other topic within semantics and/or pragmatics, feel free to come to my office hours.

Prof. Dr. George Walkden

Multilingualism and Mary, Queen of Scots

In this thesis, you will be conducting corpus-based research on the multilingual usage of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587). Fluently multilingual from birth, Mary’s letters are written in French, Scots and English, and the aim of the thesis is to establish patterns and regularities in this usage, as well as potential cross-linguistic influences. Required skills: Corpus linguistics, ideally experience working with historical texts, some knowledge of French and English Language of the thesis: English or German

Language contact and syntax in Early Modern English

In this thesis, you will investigate the grammatical effects of lexical borrowings from French and Latin into English, with a specific focus on French and Latin verbs with non-finite complements. You’ll be testing the idea that these borrowings entered the system at a crucial time to trigger wider changes in complementation patterns. Required skills: Corpus linguistics, ideally experience working with historical texts, basic syntax Language of the thesis: English or German

Transylvanian Saxon in contact

In this thesis, you will investigate the Transylvanian Saxon variety of German, a language island in northern Romania. You will use the Audioatlas Siebenbürgisch-Sächsischer Dialekte to investigate some aspect of contact effects of Romanian and/or standard German on this variety and its geographical patterning. Required skills: High level of German, ideally experience in working with recorded spoken data Language of the thesis: English or German

You can come to me with ideas about projects with a historical or syntactic dimension to them, especially those that use corpus evidence. Language of the thesis: English or German

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55 Top-Rated Research Topics in Linguistics For an A+

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• Language in context ,
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• Language meaning.

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• The nature of language
• How human languages are classified
• Tools used in language identification

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History of Language Research Topics

• The contribution of Greek philosophers to language
• Significance of the over 30,000 preserved cuneiform writings to language
• Early speculations about the origin of language
• The long history of language as rooted in mythology
• Why the origin of language is an unanswerable problem
• A critical analysis of theories that explain the origin and development of language

Argumentative College Linguistic Research Topics

• Is language the only way we can use to communicate?
• Does a brain injury have an impact on language?
• Should we refer to the language as a mere system of symbols?
• Do language disorders make it a difficult subject to study?
• Does the mother tongue have an impact on efficient communication?
• Should we learn two or more languages?

Linguistics Research Topics – Tough Questions

• Why is there a similarity among many English and French words?
• What makes people speak different languages?
• Why does the mother tongue always interfere with one’s pronunciation?
• What makes it possible for language translation?
• Is sign language only a matter of making signs with the hands?
• Why are some languages difficult to learn than others?

Sociolinguistic Research Topics

• Social factors that necessitate language variation and varieties
• What are the attitudes to language among different societies?
• The relationship between language and identity
• A critical evaluation of language and ethnicity
• Analyzing language attrition among most English speakers
• Distinct functions of language among different communities

Interesting Topics in Linguistics

• Salient factors that contribute to language shift and death
• Why nobody can claim to know a certain language in its entirety
• Why is written communication more precise than spoken one?
• Problems of ambiguity during language translation
• Does language influence society, or vice versa, is it true?
• The effectiveness of language support and subject teaching

Linguistics Paper Topics on Politics

• Persuasive language strategies and techniques in political speeches
• Why politicians use culturally used languages when addressing indigenous communities?
• The place of colonial rule in African politics
• A case study of effective political communication
• Understanding the changing landscape of political communication
• The use of buzz words and tag lines in political speeches

Linguistics Research Paper Topics on Semantics

• How does meaning work in language analysis and interpretation?
• How can the meanings of words relate to each other?
• Ways in which sentences are related to one another
• What causes ambiguity to arise in language?
• How do different speakers acquire a sense of meaning?
• A critical analysis of language use and language acquisition

Linguistic Topics on Translation

• The role of the latest technologies in the translation industry
• Is the translator training and pedagogy producing efficient translators?
• Are translations the cause of misunderstanding between different languages?
• What is the effectiveness of audiovisual translation?
• Is literary translation causing more harm than good in communication?
• What is the relationship between translation and popular culture?

Interesting Linguistics Topics on Language Disorders

• Causes of receptive language disorders among children
• Mental formation of language disorders during a child’s development
• Symptoms of language disorder and how to deal with them
• What is the effectiveness of psychotherapy in dealing with language disorders?
• Why is autism spectrum disorder common among most children?
• What causes problems with the sentence and word flow?
• Why children of 1 and 2 years of age have trouble with p, b, m, h, and w sounds

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Unpacking the history of middle chinese *ɣu- in the yue dialects in guangdong: a dialect geographical analysis , perception and production of singular they in british english , cross-dialect variation in dinka tonal morphology , morphophonological interactions in shilluk: an investigation into the tone system and suffixation patterns in the gar dialect , vowel duration in the standard english of scotland , linguicide or linguistic suicide: a case study of indigenous minority languages in france , combining translation into the second language and second language learning : an integrated computational approach , post-critical period age of arrival and its relationship to ultimate attainment in a second language , hci for development: does sense of agency affect the adoption of a mobile health insurance service in tanzania , language policy and planning in xinjiang uygur autonomous region of china , comparable structural priming from comprehension and production: evidence against error-based learning of syntactic structure , developing educational games for teaching children with special educational needs , variation in the speech of university students from edinburgh: the cases of /x/ and // , a diachronic constructional investigation into the adverse avertive schema in chinese , onset consonants and the perceptions of tone and voicing in thai , simulating the interaction between mindreading and language in development and evolution , in task-oriented dyadic dialogue, how do non-native speakers of english align with each other in terms of lexical choices , native english speakers' music ability and their perception and production of l2 mandarin tones , a study of cmc language switching in china , the cognitive processes involved with hitting a fastball and why the baseball axiom "keeping your eye on the ball" is an exercise in futility .

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Any Questions? Polarity as a Window into the Structure of Questions 

Diachronic poetics and language history: studies in archaic greek poetry , feature mismatch: deponency in indo-european languages , interpreting questions with non-exhaustive answers , linking form to meaning: reevaluating the evidence for the unaccusative hypothesis , a modular theory of radical pro drop , nominal arguments and language variation , prosodic noun incorporation and verb-initial syntax , the semantics of measurement , the sense of self: topics in the semantics of de se expressions , soft but strong. neg-raising, soft triggers, and exhaustification , split intransitivity in ranmo , studies in tocharian adjective formation , the syntax-phonology interface in native and near-native korean , the caland system in the north: archaism and innovation in property-concept/state morphology in balto-slavic , the linguistic and conceptual representation of scalar alternatives: number and 'only' as case studies , toward a theory of mandarin quantification , unnatural phonology: a synchrony-diachrony interface approach .

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Computational Linguistics: Theses & Dissertations

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Theses and dissertations are a key source for finding the latest scholarship, additional material such as data sets, and detailed research. They can also help you find out what has been written on a topic, uncover other sources through citations, and get inspiration for your own research project. Theses and dissertations are typically held in print and/or electronically by the institution where they were written. Many newer theses can be accessed online. Check with the library or academic department where it was written if you cannot find a thesis or dissertation online.

• ResearchWorks Archive: Linguistics Digital archive of full-text UW linguistics papers; including all UW linguistics theses and dissertations 2011 to present. Login with UW NetID for full access.
• Older UW linguistics theses (UW Libraries Search) Hard copies of over 400 UW linguistics dissertations and theses submitted to the University Libraries, 1963–2011
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• Last Updated: Feb 25, 2024 5:38 PM
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Department of Linguistics

• Honors Theses

Linguistics 99

Senior Tutorial Linguistics 99 is a full course intended for the researching and writing of an honors thesis, under the supervision of a faculty member. (Recall furthermore that Honors students are expected to begin exploring possible thesis topics during Linguistics 98b , the spring semester Junior Year Tutorial.) Final responsibility for assigning the thesis advisor rests with the Director of Undergraduate Studies, although every effort is made to accommodate students’ wishes in this respect.

Thesis Guidelines

The deadline for submission of the senior thesis is 5 p.m. on the last weekday before the beginning of spring recess. Extensions are granted only under the most extreme circumstances.

The thesis should be submitted in PDF format via email to both the Director of Undergraduate Studies and the Assistant Head Tutor. No hard copy is required for submission.

Once grades have been assigned, any thesis receiving a Summa or Magna grade must be printed and given to the Assistant Head Tutor for submiss ion to the Harvard Archives. The thesis should be printed one-sided on 8½” x 11” paper that is acid-free, alkaline-buffered, and durable (available at any office supply or print/copy services store). The left margin should be set at 1.5 inches and the right, top, and bottom margins should be set at one inch. The thesis must be unbound.

The thesis should be roughly 50-70 pages. Although many students find it more difficult to produce a coherent, concise study than a longer, less carefully-edited version, the former is strongly encouraged.

Please use footnotes (rather than endnotes) if possible.

Organization

The thesis should include the following:

• Acknowledgements (optional)
• Table of Contents:  A list of the names of chapters with the appropriate page numbers.
• Abstract: A one-page synopsis of the problem addressed, providing the context of the research as well as the conclusion and possible implications.
• References: A list of reference materials utilized in the researching and writing of the thesis

For formatting, follow the Language style sheet .

Title each section and subsection (if applicable). At the beginning of each major discussion, tell the reader what the section is about. Examples that illustrate your description, as well as derivations that illustrate your analysis, are extremely useful; often a single example can be clearer than pages of difficult exposition. Number the examples. Give titles to formal rules (“Rule 51” does not provide the reader with much information when it is referred to 20 pages later), and when you give a formal rule, always give an informal prose description as well. Tables to organize results are also very useful.

Evaluation of Honors Theses

Each thesis is evaluated by three faculty readers, including the primary thesis advisor. If students have received substantial supervision or advice from scholars other than their advisors, they should inform the Head Tutor so that these scholars can be considered for inclusion on the committee of readers. Responsibility for the appointment of the committee, however, rests with the Head Tutor’s Office. Honors theses are graded by the Department on the following scale: Summa, Summa-, Magna+, Magna, Magna-, Cum+, Cum, No Credit.

General guidelines for a Summa

A Summa thesis should be both original/creative and technically superb. It is generally equivalent to or better than what one would expect from an M.A. thesis.

General guidelines for a Magna

A Magna thesis should be a solid piece of work although it may lack somewhat in originality. Magnas have sometimes been awarded because the thesis clearly reflects an enormous amount of work, even though the results may be somewhat disappointing. A Magna generally corresponds to an A/A-, while a Summa corresponds to an A+.  

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Department of Computational Linguistics

Quicklinks und sprachwechsel, main navigation, master's thesis, process and organisation.

You can find all current information about the completion of your Master's degree program and a Master's thesis in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences here . For the process of the booking of the Master's thesis, please have a look here .

Formal requirements

The Master's thesis is an independently written body of work. Group work is not allowed. Students have two semesters (incl. time for the evaluation) to work on their thesis, which is assessed and worth 30 ECTS credits. Before booking the module, the topic and the date of submission must be agreed upon with the supervisor of the thesis.

The legal framework for the writing of a Master's thesis is set out in the General Regulations for the Study of Bachelor and Master Degree Programs at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of the University of Zurich of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of t he University of Zurich, to be found on this site (in German): https://www.phil.uzh.ch/de/studium/dokumente/rechtsgrundlagen.html

Please note the information and deadlines of the Faculty.

Topic and aim

The topic of the Master's thesis must be agreed upon and approved by a representative of the department (a professor) of Computational Linguistics. The agreed and approved topic will be recorded on the topic sheet (see below). The representative of the department can delegate this task to a member of middle management.

Open topics for theses can be found here .

In the Master's thesis, the students should prove that he/she can process a scientifically relevant question from the field of computational linguistics or language technology in a methodically clean way and present it adequately. The state of the art is to be reprocessed in relation to the chosen question, i.e. no new scientific knowledge is required (but this is not prohibited). The formal rules of the discipline (e.g. regarding references) must be taken into account.

Supervision

As a rule, an employee of the department (post-doc, research associate, professor) supervises the work. However, there is no entitlement to supervision. Supervisors have to have at least a doctoral degree. For the evaluation of the Master's thesis, the supervisor will prepare an expert opinion (§32 of the study regulations).

Scope and design

The Master's thesis should not exceed 80 pages, (approx. 240, 000 characters, excluding appendices and bibliography). Extensive data, which is only suitable for further processing by machine (program code, corpora, etc.) should also be in extracts or in the appendix. 

A proof copy of the thesis must be submitted directly to the supervisor, who will determine the outer form.

• two files 'abstract_de' and 'abstract_en' with a German and an English summary of the work (approx. 100 words each, file format: ASCII or HTML);
• a file with the complete master's thesis 'masterarbeit.pdf' including all attachments in PDF format.

The following conditions must be met:

• Font types other than the freely available Type-1 fonts (Helvetica, Times New Roman, etc.) must be included in the PDF document. This must be specified as an option when converting to PDF format.
• The sheet size must not exceed 210 x 297mm (DIN A4).
• Graphics in the text are to be scaled to a reasonable resolution. 300 dpi is enough for graphics.
• The file with the full contents of the work must not be read-only.
• Program code, corpora and other data, which are suitable for further processing by machine, should be included in their complete form. These should be presented in ASCII, not in PDF format, and should be in separate files, which are to be named in a self-explanatorily manner. Information required to process the data on the computer must be explicit in order to allow for efficient testing.

Here is a LaTeX template for a Bachelor's thesis, which can be adapted for a Master's thesis:

https://gitlab.uzh.ch/latex-templates/ba-thesis-cl

Topic sheet

Once the topic of the master's thesis is approved by a representative of the department, he/she establishes an official topic sheet (PDF, 145 KB) for the particular thesis (with title and task description). This topic sheet is signed by the student and the representative in order to ensure:

1.     On the one hand, the topic is reserved for you, and

2.     On the other hand, you agree to write the work within the prescribed period.

Copyright and rights of use

Under current law, the copyright for the Master's thesis lies with the student. However, the student must grant the University of Zurich, represented by the Department of Computational Linguistics, a free, non-permanent, non-exclusive right to use the master's thesis (especially for publication on the Web) as well as all products (especially software) created during the work. A declaration must be signed by the student at the beginning of the thesis. In exceptional cases, this rule may not apply if mutually agreed upon.

Basic rules of academic honesty

The easy availability of texts in digital form has created the impression in the general public (and thus also among students) that everything that is published is somehow in the "public domain" and can therefore be freely inserted into one's own work. This impression is false. Formulations, trains of thought and other intellectual achievements taken over from others must be meticulously and precisely referenced - everything else is plagiarism. This is especially relevant for assessments such as seminar papers, programming projects, term papers, bachelor's and master's theses. Due to the increasing spread of plagiarism, the university has significantly tightened the sanctions that can be imposed on plagiarising students.

Please have a look at these leaflets about plagiarism:

Official information sheet for the University of Zurich (PDF, 167 KB)  (in German)

Information sheet for the Department of Computational Linguistics (PDF, 83 KB)  (in German)

Guidelines on the Use of Text Generation Models for Seminar Papers and Theses

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Student Consultation

For questions that are not answered in the guidelines and study regulations , read the FAQ first. Please also consult the site Student Services of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

If a question remains unanswered, please contact the Student Advisor for Computational Linguistics .

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Information for International students: International Scholars Center

For detailed information on what you need to take into account upon relocating to Switzerland, please refer to  Before and After Arrival .

Download guidelines and other important documents here .

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