Hello everyone,
I am working on my statement of intent/purpose for graduate school admissions at the University of Chicago. I would greatly appreciate any advice that you might have to improve it. I am hoping to use adapted copies of this statement, with changes for research opportunities available at other institutions and what attracts me to other schools. I will post those essays separately as they are finished.
Here is the statement:
To the Members of the Selection Committee:
As a freshman in high school I first began to understand the amazing complexity of language, initially through exposure to French, and then to a host of other foreign languages, including Latin, Spanish, German, Japanese, Mandarin, and Russian. At the onset my language learning endeavors were fueled by a desire to figure out the "secret" codes that had been swirling all around without my ever realizing it. Yet as I wandered from one language to the next, both the unexpected similarities and startling differences between my chosen languages struck me. Soon, instead of pondering the nature of individual languages, I wanted to understand the nature of language as a whole. What were the limitations on word structure and order in language? Did people from different linguistic backgrounds perceive the world differently? What causes languages to evolve and die off? What causes some people to struggle with even their native language? I still ponder those same questions to this very day.
When my undergraduate career began and the time came to pick a major, there was no hesitation. Although I was not yet certain what overall direction my life would take, I understood that my future endeavors would be tied to linguistics.
At the University of Kentucky I gained a strong foundation in many of the linguistic sub-disciplines. The UK faculty worked to foster appreciation of the discipline and their individual areas of expertise, and I could not be happier to have had the opportunity to learn from them. Some of the pieces that I have produced under their tutelage, such as term papers on tone sandhi in Mandarin Chinese, polysemy in French negation, or an independent research paper on Russian lexical borrowings from English, constitute initial inquiries that I hope to expand upon in the future.
At UK a strong infrastructure for study abroad and multiple scholarships afforded me the opportunity to spend several semesters abroad studying and travelling abroad, experiences that deepened my understanding of multiple foreign languages and exposed me to different perspectives on language, culture, and nearly every other aspect of daily life through the prism of linguistic exchanges and interactions. I attended courses on sociolinguistics, French syntax, and the history of French linguistic thought at l'Université du Havre in Normandy. I learned about Russian morphology, grammatical structure, and speech registers in St. Petersburg. While studying in Shanghai and Dalian, China I took advantage of classes on the history of China, its culture, and Mandarin Chinese, as well as courses on Mandarin phonology and regional variation in accent.
After I completed my two concurrent Bachelor's degrees, I decided to spend a year in Deauville, France teaching English. That time spent away from academics, and my subsequent work as an employee of the University of Kentucky have sharpened my focus on what I want for my future. Consequently I have realized that I am most content when I am solving problems, learning new things, and helping others to learn them. Both learning about and teaching languages and linguistics is what gives me the greatest satisfaction. Ultimately I intend to earn my doctorate in theoretical linguistics in order to pursue an academic career as a researcher and teacher.
Two of the areas in linguistics that fascinate me the most are syntax and semantics, especially in Slavic and Sino-Tibetan languages. I hope to research the syntax and semantics of existential verbs (byt' and others) in Russian, particularly those that alternate the genitive case with the nominative. I hope to establish a new perspective on the semantic links between the genitive of negation and the intensional genitive. Obviation in Russian subjunctive clauses and ambiguities in co-referencing and control in Russian and other languages also interest me.
Likewise I want to analyze Mandarin verb stems and how they address aspect and scalarity. Linguists have deternmined that there are certain verbs in Mandarin that imply the attempt of an action, but require additional elements to indicate whether that action achieved its full execution. Thus a sentence that glosses roughly into English as 'Lee killed five people, but only one died' is acceptable to a Mandarin speaker. Even more intriguing is the resulting lack of consensus as to whether verbal aspect is lexicalized in the verb stems or primarily determined by sentence particles. I would very much like to contribute to the development of a new perspective on lexical aspect. I addition this issue prompts the question as to how such features appear in other Chinese dialects, if Mandarin speakers from different regions of China have variation in regards to these features, and what other languages show a similar tendency towards "incomplete" verbs and how the governance of such verbs compares among languages. These verbs raise some interesting questions about Mandarin sentence structure and syntax that demand further inquiry.
I also have interests in the evolution of language, the politics and economics of language, and the interplay between cultural identity and language. As such, if I am granted admission into the program, I will continue my look into external influences on the evolution of the modern Russian lexicon and language policy issues in the former USSR, both in relation to minority languages and towards Russian in the formerly dominated territories. For instance, the legislation for and against the use of Russian as a language of public discourse has caused tensions between population subsets throughout the former USSR, which raises interesting questions about the intersection of language and socio-political identity and what happens as the perceived standing of a favored language diminishes.
The University of Chicago's graduate program offers its students an amazing range of courses, the opportunity to actively participate in a large group of linguistics graduate students and faculty, and excellent research facilities in the Landahl Center. Even more attractive is the attentiveness to early student development evident in first year assessments and qualifying papers. Many other programs that I have looked at treat the first semesters of graduate study as a continuation of undergraduate work, with little faculty guidance or independent research. I know that it is incredibly important for me to work on improving my abilities as a researcher and scholar of linguistics and the fact that the University of Chicago prioritizes the full realization of such skills from day one is truly wonderful. I think that I would not only gain greatly from my association with the program, but also make significant contributions in my own right.
I still ponder those same questions to this very day.
The UK faculty worked to foster my appreciation of the discipline and their individual areas of expertise, and I could not be happier to have had the opportunity to learn from them.
At UK a strong infrastructure for study abroad and multiple scholarships afforded me the opportunity to spend several semesters abroad studying and traveling abroad, experiences that deepened my understanding of multiple foreign languages and exposed me to different perspectives on language, culture, and nearly every other aspect of daily life through the prism of linguistic exchanges and interactions.---You are such an eloquent writer!
I hope to establish a new perspective on the semantic links between the genitive of negation and the intentional genitive.
Likewise, I want to analyze Mandarin verb stems and how they address aspect and scalarity.---Are you sure this is a word?
Linguists have determined that there are certain verbs in Mandarin that imply the attempt of an action, but require additional elements to indicate whether that action achieved its full execution.
In addition this issue promptsthere is the question as to how such features appear in other Chinese dialects, if Mandarin speakers from different regions of China have variation...
They'll be very lucky to have you as a student!
