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Andrew D.M. Smith

I'm an evolutionary linguist at the Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit in Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh.

I study the cognitive and cultural foundations of language in order to investigate how language evolved and became complex. My areas of research interest include:

  • The cognitive origins of linguistic complexity
  • Cross-situational learning
  • The cultural evolution of systematicity

I'm currently using an experimental approach to explore the emergence and development of systematicity, together with my colleagues Barbora Skarabela, Monica Tamariz and Simon Kirby. More details on this ESRC project can be found on the project's webpage.

I also organise the LEC's weekly seminars with Monica Tamariz. If you'd like to give us a talk, drop one of us a line.

Andrew Smith


Room 1.14, Dugald Stewart Building,

3 Charles Street, EDINBURGH, EH8 9AD, Scotland.

Tel: +44 (0) 131 651 1837

E-mail: a n d r e w @ ling.ed.ac.uk



Latest News

  • I am an invited discussant at the Nijmegen lectures in December 2009. Morten Christiansen is the keynote speaker.
  • Paper showing that cross-situational learning facilitates the acquisition of large vocabularies, and that learning times are not unreasonably long, written with Richard Blythe and Kenny Smith, is in press (Blythe et al. in press) in Cognitive Science.
  • Paper setting out a unified analysis of metaphor- and reanalysis-based accounts of grammaticalisation, and suggesting that grammaticalisation is an instantiation of a domain-general, pre-linguistic phenomenon, written with Stefan Hoefler, has been published (Hoefler and Smith 2009) in Studies in Language 33(4) 883-906.
  • I am managing the submissions and reviews for the forthcoming Evolang conference in Utrecht (14-17 April 2010), I am also editing the proceedings with Bart de Boer, Marieke Schouwstra and Kenny Smith, which will again be published by World Scientific.

Supervision

I supervise the following PhD students:

Teaching

In 2009-10, I will be teaching Simulating Language with Simon Kirby, and Linguistics II Ear Training with Alice Turk and Satsuki Nakai.

In previous years, I have taught Honours/MSc courses in Phonetics and Phonology and Syntax, and have been heavily involved in first- and second-year linguistics courses, teaching Phonology, Historical Linguistics, Structure of Arabic, Writing Systems, and designing the 'exotic' language assessments.

I also teach the Phonetics and Phonology component of the Foundations of Language course at the University of Stirling.