Entry requirements

120 credits including 30 credits in a language subject. Proficiency in English equivalent to the Swedish upper secondary course English 6.

Learning outcomes

To earn the grade Pass, the student should, on completion of the course, be able to

• give an overview of the most common types of language change
• describe and problematize the tree model and explain how a language family tree represents differing degrees of relationship between the languages
• discuss the special role of innovations to establish language relationships
• explain the concept of substitution rates and how these are used in glottochronology to estimate the ages of proto-languages
• describe the principles of cognate assessment and apply them to simple examples
• compare and contrast how the comparative method and parsimony based methods proceed to construct the tree of a language family, and apply parsimony to simple examples
• describe different formalized models of cognate evolution on a language family tree
• apply algorithms to simple examples to calculate character probabilities according to different character-based evolutionary models
• discuss how likelihood-inference and models of cognate evolution in combination can be used to estimate the ages of a proto-languages and compare this to the method of glottochronology
• discuss the term overfitting and critically assess where the phenomenon may occur in computational historical linguistics
• critically discuss the assumptions of different models in computational historical linguistics and whether these influence how the results of different studies in historical linguistics can be interpreted.

Content

The course treats different approaches used in computational historical linguistics and their applicability and range. The tree model. Glottochronology. Parsimony. Models of cognate evolution. Likelihood-based inference.

Instruction

The instruction consists of lectures, exercises and assessment. The student's own learning activities are crucial for the completion of the course.

Assessment

The examination for the course is divided into two parts:

1. Continuous written assignments

2. A project which is also to be presented

Information concerning the project will be given at the start of the course. For the course grade Pass (G) this grade has to be achieved on all examining activities. For Pass with Distinction (VG), this grade also has to be reached for the project part.

If there are special reasons for doing so, an examiner may make an exception from the method of assessment indicated and allow a student to be assessed by another method. An example of special reasons might be a certificate regarding special pedagogical support from the University's disability coordinator.