Academic year 2022-2023
This is the webpage for the Honours/MSc course Origins and Evolution of Language, running in academic year 2022/2023 (semester 2). I will add links to materials (readings, tutorial exercises, lecture slides etc) to this page; you will need to use Learn for electronic submission of your assessed work and to keep an eye on announcements, and Top Hat for participation in quizzes.
We will review current theories which attempt to explain how and why human language evolved, covering both the biological evolution of the human capacity for language, and cultural evolution of languages themselves. Modern evolutionary linguistics is a highly interdisciplinary field, and we will touch on the basics of evolutionary biology, animal communication and animal cognition, fieldwork on emerging sign languages, and computational models and experimental studies of language evolution pioneered here in Edinburgh, among other topics. No prior knowledge of these areas is assumed.
Note that this course has evolved over the years – the course in something like its current form was originally written by Kenny Smith, based on a preceding course created by Jim Hurford, and contributions and modifications have been made by James Winters, Marieke Schouwstra, Christine Cuskley and Matt Spike.
The course organiser and lecturer is Kenny Smith (that’s me). The best way to get in touch with me is in one of the lectures, see below, or by email to kenny.smith@ed.ac.uk.
Tutorials will be run by three excellent tutors: Lauren Fletcher, Aislinn Keogh, and Maisy Hallam.
We have lectures 2.10pm-4pm on Mondays, and you will be allocated to a tutorial group which will meet for 1 hour later in the week (Wednesday, Thursday or Friday). There is no tutorial in week 1 - tutorials start in week 2 (week commencing 23rd January).
Lectures and tutorials are both essential to doing well on the course - the lectures provide a broad overview of major issues in the evolution of language, and the tutorials give you the opportunity to discuss more specific topics in detail with your classmates, guided by your tutor.
Lectures take place on Mondays, 2.10pm-4pm, in the Hugh Robson Building Lecture Theatre.
You will be allocated to a tutorial group automatically. Tutorials take place at various times Wednesday to Friday, in rooms in the Dugald Stewart Building and 7 George Square.
Hopefully this goes without saying, but do not come to lectures or tutorials if you are unwell or think you might be! If you are unwell you can participate in lectures remotely, so you won’t miss out and you’ll be protecting the rest of us. Instructions on how to access live lecture streams/recordings are on the course page on Learn. If I am isolating or unwell (but still well enough lecture) we’ll do the lecture remotely. There is no remote option for tutorials (but still, don’t turn up if you are unwell).
The course is assessed via 2 essays, due on 2nd March and 13th April. Full details are provided in the assignment brief and FAQ.
We will be using Top Hat for weekly reading quizzes (to allow you check you understand basic concepts in the readings, and also to flag up anything to me I need to cover in the lecture) and in-class questions (as a tool to check understanding or promote discussion).
Instructions for signing up to Top Hat via EASE are here. To get to the content for this course, you will need the join code, which is on Learn (to prevent randoms signing up).
In order to encourage you to complete the reading and to allow you (and me) to check whether you actually understood it, you need to complete weekly reading quizzes on Top Hat (starting in week 2). Quizzes will open as soon as I have written them (I’ll get them all up as fast as I can) and close at 1pm on the day of the lecture they go with (e.g. the quiz for the week 2 lecture will close at 1pm on Monday of week 2, 1 hour before the lecture). To sign up to Top Hat, see the information above. To access the reading quizzes:
The quiz is not assessed and does not contribute to your mark for the course. It’s just intended to help you learn stuff, which is what the course is for. As far as possible I have made it so your responses are anonymous, so you don’t even have to be worried about being sheepish if you get one wrong. The only place this isn’t the case is the free-form comments - for some reason I can’t make those anonymous, so don’t fill them with obscenities, I’ll know it’s you.
I will also use Top Hat to get you to answer multiple-choice questions in class. To answer those questions:
Unfortunately the course will be disrupted by strike action taken by teaching staff seeking better pay and conditions - see the UCU pages for details. There will be no classes on strike days. Strike dates are:
Course content will appear here as we work through the course - I will put materials up as far in advance as possible, to enable you to read ahead where you can.
Each week there will be two sets of readings: one associated with the lecture, and another for the tutorial.
Lecture readings involves a reading (chapters from Fitch’s Evolution of Language, or other journal papers/book chapters) plus a blog post introducing the topic and highlighting any important points. I expect you to do these readings before the associated lectures since they provide useful background information and context to what I say in lectures – I will assume you have done in class, and you’ll have to talk about them. As mentioned above, in order to encourage you to complete the reading and to allow you to check whether you actually understood it, there is also a Top Hat quiz to be completed before each class.
For the tutorials you will be asked to read one or more journal papers/book chapters and then turn up prepared to discuss these in tutorials. Tutorials give you the opportunity to clarify points you didn’t understand with your classmates, but also discuss interesting points, strengths and weaknesses of the papers, and get some practice critically evaluating research in language evolution. For some weeks these tutorials will be organised as debates, where you are asked to read papers making conflicting claims and then debate the merits of the two approaches with your classmates.
Due to strike action, no Wednesday tutorials this week.
Due to strike action, no Thursday or Friday tutorials this week.
Due to strike action, no Wednesday or Thursday tutorials this week.
No classes in flexible learning week. Note that you have an assignment due the following week.
No classes this week - the first assignment is due on the Thursday of this week (2nd March).
Due to strike action, no Thursday or Friday tutorials this week.
Due to strike action, no lecture or Wednesday tutorial this week. Thursday and Friday tutorials will run.
All aspects of this work are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.