This course provides and overview of the field of sign language linguistics by looking at three sub-areas of sign language research that have contributed to our understanding of language more broadly over the last 50 years: (1) iconicity, meaning and morphology; (2) language evolution, language acquisition and language emergence; (3) the influence of communication modality on linguistic and neurophysiology.The essentials of sign language structure will be covered in the course lectures, and the supplemental readings provide more detail about the topics of sign language structure that figure prominently in the thematic topics of the course. Knowledge of a sign language is not required.