Master Thesis
Table of contents
The Master Thesis
The Master Thesis is a written piece of work written independently by the student and is supervised by a Professor or another member of staff holding at least a PhD degree. As a rule, the Master's thesis comprises 50 - 90 pages (approx. 29,000 - 52,000 words) and is graded.
| Module | 06SM271-MA Master's Thesis |
| Description | The Master's thesis is the proof of the ability to work independently on a level-specific scientific task within the given time limit and to present it adequately. In particular, it demonstrates the ability to work on a linguistic problem using adequate methodological tools and to embed it in the relevant research discussion. |
| ECTS Credits | 30 |
| Duration | 2 semesters |
| Prerequisites | Familiarity with the subject-specific conceptual and methodological knowledge |
Preparation
The Master Thesis is usually supervised by a professor. Members of staff holding a doctoral degree are also allowed to supervise MA theses. Note, however, that they are not obliged to do so.
Make sure to contact a potential supervisor prior to booking the MA thesis module online – ideally at the end of the preceding semester, but no later than:
August 5 for the fall semester
January 5 for the spring semester
Students are to agree on their topic with their supervisor in a timely manner. Further details pertaining to requirements specific to the respective field in which the student has chosen to write the thesis should be discussed with them.
We strongly recommend that you write your MA thesis in the last semester and that you have successfully completed at least one seminar paper before starting your MA thesis.
Topic
The topic of the MA thesis can either be chosen freely or come from topics suggested by lecturers. The language in which the thesis is written is determined according to the agreement with the supervisor. It should be noted, however, that if a teaching diploma is being pursued, it is advisable to choose the topic for the MA thesis in a way that it will also be recognized for the teaching diploma (for details, see section Lehrdiplom für Maturitätsschulen).
Interdisciplinary Master Thesis
We generally want to support interdisciplinary work. If you think that having two supervisors is essential, please get in contact with the study advisor. 
Topics with a pending ethics committee approval
We do not recommend taking on a topic that has a pending ethics committee approval. Please discuss this with your supervisor first. We cannot extent any deadlines due to delays or complications caused by this.
Language
The topic of the MA thesis can either be chosen freely or come from topics suggested by lecturers. The language in which the thesis is written is determined according to the agreement with the supervisor. It should be noted, however, that if a teaching diploma is being pursued, it is advisable to choose the topic for the MA thesis in a way that it will also be recognized for the teaching diploma (for details, see section Lehrdiplom an Maturitätsschulen.
Formal Requirements
The recommendation for the formatting of your MA thesis is as follows:
- Font: Times New Roman
- Font size: 12pt
- Line spacing: 1.5
- Margin: left/right 2.5cm, top/bottom 2cm
- Justification: justified with automatic hyphenation
Please discuss specifics with your supervisor.
Visit the download area for template covers and the Selbständigkeitserklärung under General Guidelines and Templates.
Booking and Deadlines
The MA thesis must be booked online during the module booking period.
Click on “Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences” to see the current deadlines as well as the cancellation deadlines.
The latest possible submission dates for the MA thesis are:
December 1 for the fall semester
June 1 for the spring semester
General information from the Faculty of Arts can be found here.
We strongly recommend that you write your MA thesis in the last semesters and that you have successfully completed at least one seminar paper before starting your MA thesis.
Supervision Agreement
Once you have booked the MA thesis module, please download this Supervision Agreement (PDF, 78 KB)and have it signed by your supervisor and you. Send it back to linguistics-ma@linguistik.uzh.ch
Recommended Reading
Alison Wray, & Aileen Bloomer. 2012. Projects in Linguistics and Language Studies: A Practical Guide to Researching Language. New York/London: Routledge.
Sunderland, Jane. 2010. Research questions in linguistics. In Lisa Litosseliti, ed. Research Methods in Linguistics. London: Continuum.
Semester Awards
The semester awards, with a value of CHF 600.–, are granted by the faculties for outstanding scholarly work. A total of 30 awards are distributed according to the size of the student body at the individual faculties. The awards are presented by the President of UZH.
Two of our students have won a semester award, congratulations!
- "Shifting Pronouns and Disruptive Technology: Studying Singular ‚They‘ with GPT-3" by Carlos Hartmann in HS22 (Digital Linguistics)
- "Mouse Tracking for Reading (MoTR): A New Incremental Processing Paradigm" by Cui Ding in HS23 (Digital Linguistics)
Archive of previous MA theses
You will fine a list of MA thesis titles written by our students. This is not an exhaustive list; we only publish with permission of the author. This list is meant to give you an idea of what other students have written their MA thesis on. Some of the theses are published on ZORA.
If you wish to make your own MA thesis available on ZORA please contact our study advisor.