Graduate Student Manual

•       Chair: Balkız Öztürk Başaran (balkiz.ozturk@bogazici.edu.tr) 

•       Vice-Chairs: Ümit Atlamaz (umit.atlamaz@bogazici.edu.tr)

                                 Ömer Demirok (omerfaruk.demirok@bogazici.edu.tr) 

•       PhD Advisor: Elena Guerzoni (elena.guerzoni@bogazici.edu.tr)

•       MA Advisor: Elena Guerzoni (elena.guerzoni@bogazici.edu.tr)

We would like to welcome you to our graduate programs in Linguistics.

Below we provide you with information on the structure and requirements of the MA and PhD programs.

Both the MA and PhD programs are full-time programs. Students who hold (or plan to hold) a full time job will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to commit themselves to a full time load in our programs. We would therefore like to make it clear that if you are working full time, you will not be allowed to take the full load in one term, and that the completion of your program will take longer.

MA Program

The regular load is 3 courses per term. This means that for each MA course, you need to allocate, in addition to the 4 hours of class time, an average of 7-8 hours of preparation and/or assignment time.

There is a one credit obligatory reading course (LING 571 or LING 572), which you should ideally take one term before, or during the term you start preparing to work on your thesis. The purpose of this course is to get you to choose the readings relevant to yout thesis.

There is also a non-credit Graduate Seminar course (LING 579) that all MA students have to take. The requirements of this course is to attend a total of 11 academic talks in workshops/conferences or individual lectures. 

Choosing a supervisor in the MA program: MA students are expected to choose a supervisor after they have completed their first two terms. Co-supervision should be considered as an option only when the chosen area of research covers two fields for which the expertise of two supervisors is essential, and not when two supervisors are specialists in similar fields.

PhD Program

The regular load is 2 courses per term. In addition to 4 hours of class time, you are expected to devote an average of 12-13 hours of preparation/assignment time per week for each course.

Choosing a supervisor in the PhD program: PhD students are expected to choose a supervisor by the beginning of the third  term. Co-supervision should be considered as an option only when the chosen area of research covers two fields for which the expertise of two supervisors is essential, and not when two supervisors are specialists in similar fields.

Academic activities students are expected to attend

•       Students are expected to attend talks by guest lecturers, BLC-talks (Boğaziçi Linguistics Circle), and any other academic activity organized by our programs, as such activities are an integral part of your graduate study at Boğaziçi University.

•       BLC-talks: Every student is required to give at least one talk on his/her thesis topic. Students are also urged to give talks on topics that they are working on, for example, a conference presentation which may have developed from a term paper. The purpose of these meetings is to get the students to organize their work, present it, and receive feedback from their peers and instructors. 

Research

Research training is an integral part of your education and we therefore would like to make some suggestions regarding your development as a linguist.

• We first suggest that you become a member of ‘linguistlist’, the most widely used platform by linguists and students of linguistics. There you will find announcements and calls for conferences (including student conferences), information on new publications, discussions of various topics, and announcements for summer/winter schools and job openings: linglite@listserv.linguistlist.org
• We also suggest that you become a member of the mailing list ‘alc = Ankara Linguistics Circle’, associated with Dilbilim Derneği. 

Through these two lists you will be able to follow linguistics related events. There are many other more specialized lists, and you can find some of these through the postings on linguistlist, others through searches on the web.

Among the many conferences you could participate in, we would like to highlight the following. These are general platforms that accept papers on a wide variety of topics, and you should see them as conferences to which you can send abstracts and get feedback from linguists from many different places and orientations:

• SLE (Societas Linguistica Europaea): Meets annually in September in a European university, Has a general session and many topicalized workshops and poster sessions.
• DGfS (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft): This is the annual meeting of the German Linguistic Society, but the attendance is nearly as large as SLE. Meets annually in Germany in Feb-March. Many sessions are in English.
• CIL/ICL (Congres International de Linguistes/ International Congress of Linguists): This is the largest worldwide platform of linguists. It meets once every five years. The next conference will be held in 2018.  

And specifically for Turkish:

• Ulusal Dilbilim Kurultayı This meets annually in a different Turkish university. Accepts papers on all topics in Linguistics (not only on Turkish). There is no permanent web page. (The webpage for this year's meeting is: http://www.udk30.org/)
• ICTL (International Conference on Turkish Linguistics): Meets biennially, once in a Turkish University, once in a university abroad. There is no permanent web page. (The webpage for this year's meeting is: http://www.ictl2016.info)
• WAFL (Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics): Meets yearly at different universities.
• Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisi is the only journal dedicated to linguistics in Turkey.

We wish you many good conferences and publications!