PhD in Linguistics - Semantics in Cambridge United States | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Semantic theory aims to precisely define the meanings possible in human language and explain how they're represented through syntax. This pursuit has roots in ancient philosophy and logic, with analytical philosophy making significant advances over the past 200 years. Recently, linguists have adopted this field of study. As generative linguistics advanced rapidly, it became clear that meaningful theories about structure-meaning relationships couldn't rely on amateur grammar concepts but needed proper syntactic science. Modern semantic research now demands expertise in both linguistic theory and philosophical logic. The foundational frameworks created during philosophy's dominance of semantics remain essential, but must now be combined with current syntactic theory and its expanding cross-linguistic evidence base. The semantics specialization program provides training in these combined disciplines.