Linguistics

Linguistics is the systematic study of human language. It is a wide-ranging degree at Cambridge, blending the arts and humanities with the social and natural sciences. 

People are often struck by the seemingly limitless differences between the world's languages, and these are also of great interest to linguists. However, the course will also help you to look beyond those differences to the deeper properties that languages share, with a view to gaining greater insight into the structure of the human mind.

Linguistics is a smaller subject at Cambridge. At Magdalene, our Linguistics students integrate well with our wider community of students taking language-focussed courses, such as students in Modern and Medieval Languages, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, or Classics.

Part of the appeal of Linguistics is that it draws on methods and knowledge from an unusually wide range of scholarship and transcends the usual subject boundaries. For instance, the study of meaning draws on work by philosophers, whereas the part of the course concentrating on the sounds of speech takes place in our Phonetics Laboratory. Here, computers are used to display and analyse the speech signal using methods from physics and engineering. Historical Linguistics, in turn, draws on methods and models employed in disciplines as diverse as philology, history, cognitive science and population genetics. This variety is what makes Linguistics fascinating to our students: at one moment you might be poring over a medieval text for evidence of how the grammar of a language has changed, and the next, learning about how the larynx creates sound energy for speech.

More details of the course and the optional papers available can be found on the University’s Undergraduate Study pages and the Theoretical and Applied Linguistics website.

The main requirement for studying Linguistics is a lively curiosity about the nature of language. If you have a strong academic background and an interest in the study of language, we would welcome an application from you.

For example, it may be that you have been struck by a language that puts its verbs in a different position in the sentence, or wondered why languages change (making Chaucer hard to understand today, and even earlier English seem rather more similar to modern German than to modern English, for instance); you may have been puzzled that automatic speech recognition software gets a perfectly clear word wrong, or realised that an utterance such as 'That's nice!' may not always signify something positive; or you may have been excited to learn that languages as diverse as Welsh and Hindi have a common ancestor. If you have found yourself asking 'Why?' or 'How?' in relation to language, Linguistics may be for you. 

As an interdisciplinary subject, there are no specific A-level (or equivalent) subject requirements, and competitive applicants may be science-orientated or arts-orientated or a combination of both. Some formal study of language, either through learning languages and/or through English Language A-level, does, however, serve as a good preparation.

There are no set subject requirements for studying Linguistics, although English, Mathematics, or any language training can all be useful.

Minimum Offer 

A-level: A*AA 

IB: 41-42 points overall, with 7,7,6 at Higher Level. 

Other qualifications: Check which other qualifications we accept 

Candidates will normally have one interview of around 40-45 minutes.

The interview process aims to assess your intellectual ability, potential, and commitment to the subject.

We do not require a written work submission for this subject.

Candidates invited for interview will need to take a written assessment. The assessment for Linguistics is a Cambridge College-registered assessment.  This means you will not need to register for this assessment in advance and the College will provide details directly to you. 

More information is available on the Interviews, Written Work and Assessments page.