Theoretical Linguistics BA

Our department, officially called ELTE BTK–NYTK Centre for Theoretical Linguistics at the Faculty of Humanities at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University has been a unique example of close cooperation between a research institution and a university for more than 30 years.

Since 2007, we have been responsible for offering a specialization and a minor in theoretical linguistics within the liberal arts BA programme, as well as an MA and a PhD programme in theoretical linguistics. We also teach introductory courses in linguistics for students of various foreign languages at ELTE.

We recommend the programme for students who are interested in

• the relationship between language and psychology,
• the acquisition of language,
• the relation between language and society,
• comparing languages,
• studying language as a formal system,
• computational applications of linguistics, and
• how the structure of languages can be described.

Aims of the programme

Our aim is to train professionals who are familiar with the general principles underlying the structure of human languages as well as with theories and methodologies used for the description and explanation of the structure of particular natural languages, and can apply them creatively. The focus of the training is on the basic disciplines, such as phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. These are complemented by the study of interface phenomena and adjoining academic fields, such as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics or neurolinguistics, in order to enable our graduates to perform a wide range of linguistics-related tasks after graduation.

Research seminars are an important part of the training at all levels, where lecturers, senior and postgraduate students discuss research findings and pursue joint research. The core teaching staff, who are all active or emeritus researchers at the research centre, includes specialists of all the major fields of modern linguistics.

The Department has shaped the landscape of linguistic research in Hungary in the last 33 years, and has earned international recognition: our graduates can be found among the department heads and professors of linguistics at ELTE and other major Hungarian universities. Many of our former MA students went on to pursue doctoral studies in leading linguistics programmes throughout the world (including MIT, NYU, Edinburgh University, CEU, Utrecht, Freiburg, Tromsø, Groningen, Stony Brook, University College London, Toronto), followed by a career in academia as university professors or researchers at top international institutions (including the University of Utah, the University of Vienna, Vienna Technical University, the University College London, CNRS Institut Jean Nicod, The Open University, or the University of British Columbia). Many of our other former students made a successful career at major multinational firms (including, for example, J. P. Morgan, Google, Amazon, or Ethereum).

The minor programme in theoretical linguistics is taught in Hungarian. See the Hungarian site for more information here