The U.S. National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency that supports science and engineering in all 50 states and U.S. territories. NSF was established in 1950 by Congress to promote the progress of science, advance the national health, prosperity and welfare, and secure the national defense.
The Linguistics Program aims to support basic science research in the realm of human language, focusing on the study of grammatical properties of individual human languages and natural language in general. It covers research areas such as syntax, linguistic semantics and pragmatics, morphology, phonetics, and phonology. The program prioritizes projects that adopt interdisciplinary methodologies or theoretical perspectives, particularly those that explore questions such as the psychological processes involved in language production, perception, and comprehension; the computational properties of language; the acoustic and physiological properties of speech; the role of human neurobiology in linguistic capacities; how language develops in children; and the social and cultural factors influencing language variation and change. It explicitly does not fund clinical research or projects aimed at developing pedagogical methods or tools for language instruction. The program expects to award 25 to 35 Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (DDRI) grants per fiscal year, with funding ranging from $300,000 to $400,000, and project budgets not exceeding $12,000 in direct costs over the duration of the award.