<p>Sorry – I don’t know how common funded MA and MS programs are. Fully funded (that is, the student pays nothing) PhD programs are much more common.</p>
<p>I know a couple of people who received their PhDs in Linguistics and who worked for years at Bell Labs. I guess they must have worked on speech recognition, although I don’t know that for a fact. </p>
<p>Since I’m not a linguist, I’m not able to give you a good idea of what you can do with your degree.</p>