Academic year 2023-2024
This is the webpage for the Honours/MSc course Origins and Evolution of Language, running in academic year 2023/2024 (semester 1). 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, to keep an eye on announcements, and for participation in pre-lecture 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, Maisy Hallam, and Ponrawee Prasertsom.
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 25th September).
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 40 George Square Room LG.09 (it’s in the basement).
You will be allocated to a tutorial group based on information you provide us on your availability - look out for announcements on Learn about how to provide this information. Tutorials take place at various times Wednesday to Friday, in rooms in 40 George Square, 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 26th October and 14th December. Full details will be provided in the assignment brief and FAQ.
Each week’s lecture reading will be accompanied by a reading quiz, which allows you to check you understand basic concepts in the readings, and also to flag up anything to me I need to cover in the lecture. We will also do in-class questions (as a tool to check understanding or promote discussion).
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 prior to the Monday lectures (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). You can access the reading quizzes on Learn, through the link “Pre-lecture 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. People who answer the questions will also get to see my notes on how I would answer those questions, and any additional thoughts I have; where appropriate I will also provide a little comment on your answer.
We will use multiple-choice questions in class to stimulate discussion - we will use wooclap for these. To participate during the lectures go to wooclap.com and enter the event code provided.
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. The lecture readings for the first few weeks are from Fitch and are quite substantial, but the volume of lecture prep reading reduces later in the course. 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 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 you will be asked to read papers that make conflicting claims and then use the tutorial time to debate the merits of the two approaches with your classmates.
There are no classes in week 2 due to strike action.
No classes this week - the first assignment is due on the Thursday of the following week (26th October), so you can use the time to work on that.
All aspects of this work are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.