This programme is part of the Ph.D. School in Linguistics, at UD. We are especially interested in syntax, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics; as well as in the more interdisciplinary fields of computational linguistics, discourse analysis, first and second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, and teaching methodology. With a firm devotion to linguistic theory, we also welcome and encourage experimental and corpus-driven approaches to the study of language; and with a focus on English, we are also open to other languages of the world.
The director of the programme is Dr. György Rákosi. Please contact him with inquires.
English Linguistics Programme teaching staff
Readers
- Tibor Laczkó - thesis supervision
- György Rákosi - thesis supervision
- Péter Pelyvás
Senior lecturers
- Ildikó Csépes - thesis supervision
- Attila Cserép - thesis supervision
- Éva Kardos - thesis supervision
- Ágoston Tóth - thesis supervision
- Enikő Tóth - thesis supervision
How to apply to our programme
When you consider application to our programme, please send us the following documents first:
- Your CV. Focus on whatever is relevant in the context of your application.
- Your MA thesis, plus any linguistically relevant publication that you have written.
- A research proposal. Between 2-4 pages, with clearly stated research objectives and hypotheses. Include a rough schedule for each year of your planned PhD studies. Take a careful look at the research domains where our colleagues provide supervision.
If you do not have a specific research proposal, or if you are not sure about your plans, please contact us and we can assisst you. We have a strict plagiarism policy, please make sure that your documents are free of plagiarism and any other forms of academic misconduct. Please also note that submitting these documents is a prerequisite to any further action towards your application. When we have received the above package, we decide whether you are quilified for our programme, and let you know if any modifications need to be made.
These documents are to be submitted as pdf files in a single zipped folder (do not use RAR-compression, we disregard RAR-files). Please forward this package to György Rákosi. If you have any questions about our programme or about the application procedure, please also contact György Rákosi.
The research plan must be finalized by April 30. (Please note that this need not be identical with whatever research plan you have to upload into your Stipendium Hungaricum application - see below -, which is a formal requirement, but a research plan that can be taken seriously requires serious work with your prospective supervisor).
Please note that the letter of support sent by us to facilitate your Stipendium application procedure does not mean that admission is guaranteed: it simply means that there is someone teaching here who is qualified and available to work with the applicant on her/his research plan. Your application package will be assessed by the admission panel of the doctoal programme, who make the final decision concerning your admission. This process may also include an extra Skype interview.
Stipendium Hungaricum Grants
For inquiries concerning the technical and administrative aspects of the Stipendium Programme in Debrecen, please contact Ibolya Kun (email: ibolya at edu.unideb.hu, phone: +36 52 512 900 / 62413 ).
Doctoral training The training comprises two stages. The first two years are dedicated to taught courses as well as to research work. This is a necessary requirement: Hungarian laws stipulate that a certain percentage of credits must be earned by coursework.
The courses are selected by the student and her/his supervisor with a view to optimal academic progress. Completing the courses and earning the required number of credits is a prerequisite for the next stage. Please note that you also need to have at least 2 scientific publications by the end of the second year, and these should be related to your research field. You cannot continue your studies if you do not meet this criterion. Since course work requires continued presence, doctoral students will be expected to spend the terms in Debrecen.
At the end of the first two years, provided that all the necessary credits have been obtained and you have at least two papers published, students sit for a complex examination which consists of
-a public defence of their dissertation hypothesis (a fifteen-page proposal that anticipates the research questions, the thesis, the methodological and theoretical underpinnings as well as the expected findings of the proposed dissertation) -a comprehensive examination in the academic fields most relevant to the proposed dissertation The successful completion of the examination is a prerequisite for the continuation of one’s research. The two final years are dedicated to the writing of the dissertations.
Defence
The process concludes with the two-stage defence of the completed dissertation. There is a preliminary defence, after which the candidate will rewrite the dissertation for the final public defence as required by the reviewers.