Course Introduction to statistical analysis for linguists

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ECTS: 1

Course leader: Katrine Rosendal Ehlers

Language: English

Graduate school: Faculty of Arts

Course fee: 0.00 DKK

Status: Course is open for application

Semester: Spring 2026

Application deadline: 18/12/2025

Cancellation deadline: 01/01/2026

Course type: Classroom teaching

Start date: 08/01/2026

Administrator: Andreas Mølgaard Laursen

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Allocation of seats

You will automatically be placed on a waiting list. After the application deadline, seats will be allocated and all applicants will be notified whether or not they have been offered a seat.

Please have a look in our FAQ

https://phd.arts.au.dk/phd-courses/courses/faq-phd-courses

Course description

Much contemporary linguistic research relies on testing your hypothesis empirically. Whether you are doing corpus research, conducting questionnaire-based research, or examining natural language phenomena, statistical analyses of your findings are relevant in examining their validity. This course will serve as an introduction to statistical analysis and special attention will be given to elements of statistics that are especially interesting to linguists and language researchers. It provides an opportunity for students who seek to refresh their knowledge of quantitative methods as well as students who want to become familiar with the field for the first time.

Aim/Learning outcomes

The course aims to introduce students to several basic approaches to statistical analysis that are relevant for conducting research in linguistics.

  • The student will be introduced to basic terminology such as mean, standard deviation, null-hypothesis, independent vs. dependent variables, p-values, t-tests, linear regression, ANOVA, confidence intervals, and more.
  • The student will be able to evaluate different statistical approaches depending on the type of data and to consider the design of their own data collection with particular approaches to statistical analysis in mind.
  • The student will be introduced to basic R syntax and how R can be used as meaningful tool for statistical analysis of linguistic data. Part of the course will be a code-along where participants work on doing simple statistical analyses of linguistic data in R. We will use the cloud service uCloud for programming, and students consequently do not need to install anything on their own computers.

Requirements for participation

None. The level of the course will fit PhD students who are interested in understanding and using (basic) statistical methods but who do not have much experience in the field themselves.

Target group/Participants

  • The course is open to PhD students at any level who are interested in learning the basics of statistical analysis and applying these terms in practice in R.

Workload

  • Course/ teaching hours: 2 consecutive days of teaching from 9 to 16, 14 hours of teaching in total.
  • Preparation hours: 0
  • Written assignments etc.: None

Language 

  • English or Danish, depending on the participants in the course

Venue

  • 8 January 2026. Jens Chr. Skous Vej 4 , 8000 Aarhus C. Building 1481, room 324
  • 9 January 2026. Jens Chr. Skous Vej 4 , 8000 Aarhus C. Building 1481, room 324

Course dates:

  • 08 January 2026 09:00 - 16:00
  • 09 January 2026 09:00 - 16:00