The Master's programme in Linguistics offers an in-depth study in linguistic approaches that deal with linguistic elements of construction and significance to understand more about language.

The Master's programme in linguistics represents further specialization and construction of knowledge within the field compared to the bachelor’s degree. It contains advanced courses in linguistics. For the candidate, this offers a great starting point for working with linguistically relevant problems in business, education and public and private administration, for example in relation to the use and adaptation of language technology tools and the development of product information. The master programme thus aims to develop the student's research skills.

The Master's programme awards 120 ECTS credits and has a stipulated duration of four semesters. The basis for the award of Master in Linguistics is by both examination and thesis. Thus, the programme has two main sections:

• One course section comprised of compulsory theory- and methodology courses, as well as elective courses. This section constitutes the first two semesters of study. Students take courses at master’s or intermediate level. Courses at master’s level must amount to a minimum of 15 credits. Theory and methodology are given attention in all courses to give the students a theoretical and practical groundwork for the master's thesis. Together with Experts in team this section gives 60 credits.
• One Master’s thesis, which is a written report of an independent scientific work. This section also gives 60 credits. Work with the thesis takes place with the help of an academic supervisor. During these remaining two semesters students are devoted to the work on the master’s thesis. Usually, the thesis will be thematically associated with one of the master programme courses. The Master's thesis gives the student a whole range of possibilities in different specializations within central areas of linguistics such as syntax, semantics, phonology, pragmatics and computational linguistics. The objective of the thesis is to enable the students to carry out an independent research task under academic supervision and be able to document their work through a Master's thesis that meets the requirements for scholarly publication.

The aim of the thesis is to enable the student to accomplish an independent research assignment under academic supervision and substantiate her or his work in a thesis that meets the requirementes of a scholarly publication.

Master students are given the possibility to participate in research projects in process. Research is currently conducted within fields such as language documentation and linguistic technology. A possible period of study abroad during the master programme gives the students an opportunity to broaden their horizons both socially and acedemically. There are possibilities of student exchange at universities where specialization within computational linguisticsis offered, among others Universität des Saarlandes, Germany, The University of Edinburgh, UK and University of Cambridge, UK.

Linguistics at NTNU
The well-established cooperation between the computer linguistic specialization in the Master's programme and the Informatics programme at NTNU (at the Faculty of Information Technology, Mathematics and Electrical Engineering) is a major advantage. We would also like to point out that the Master’s degree programme in Linguistics has a unique course offer in Pragmatics compared to other Norwegian universities.