MapLE Masterclass
The MapLE Masterclass is held as a first session in the Autumn on 2025 for selected participants, and later becomes available on Coursera for others too.
What is this course about?
When people communicate, they not only exchange information, but they also indicate how the speaker’s and addressee’s knowledge relate to that information. What is the source of the information, how certain is the speaker of it, is it unexpected for the speaker or addressee? All these aspects fall under epistemicity – the expression of the speaker’s and addressee’s knowledge in grammar.
In this online masterclass, you will become familiar with the whole area of epistemicity, learning about evidentiality, epistemic modality, egophoricity, engagement, mirativity, and information structure. You will learn what is behind the terms, see different linguistic strategies to express speaker and addressee knowledge, and practise recognising and describing this in different languages.
What to expect
The course will cover 8 weeks and is organised around self-study. Each week you learn by reading articles, watching online video explainers, and doing exercises, after which there is an online interactive seminar to discuss what you’ve learned with fellow participants and instructors.
Time investment: The course is estimated to take 48 hours in total, consisting of a 2 hour seminar and 4 hours of self-study per week.
Schedule: The online seminars will be held on Wednesdays 13:00-15:00 CEST. The programme is as follows, centred around questions about speakers’ and addressees’ knowledge in relation to information exchange:
| 17 September | What is epistemicity? |
| 24 September | How certain is your knowledge? |
| 1 October | How do you know about this? I |
| 8 October | How do you know about this? II |
| 15 October | Do you know what I know? |
| 22 October | Is the information surprising? |
| 29 October | How do I best pack this information for you? |
| 5 November | How do we study epistemicity? |
Further information
This masterclass forms part of the MapLE project (Mapping Linguistic Epistemicity), funded by the Dutch Research Council NWO and based at Leiden University. In the second stage of this project, data on epistemicity will be collected in various African languages, and positions will be open for collaborators on the project. The applications for these positions will close at the end of November 2025.
Contact
The course coordinators are Jenneke van der Wal and Håvard Weiberg-Johansen. For any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us via maple@hum.leidenuniv.nl.
MapLE project 