The research programme Descriptive and Comparative Linguistics brings together LUCL researchers who focus mainly on descriptive and comparative linguistics.

LUCL research falling under this programme is dedicated to increasing the scientific understanding of the ways in which linguistic and cultural factors shape human language in space and over time.

Almost all languages of Europe and of a large part of western Asia belong to a single language family, which is called Indo-European, and which includes modern languages like English, Dutch, Russian, Farsi, but also ancient ones like Ancient Greek, Latin, Hittite and Sanskrit.

This project proposes an integrated and comparative study on the syntactic, semantic, prosodic and processing aspects of in-situ wh-questions, taking the Grammar-parser correspondence hypothesis (Phillips 1996, 2003) as a guiding principle.

This book is a first comparative study of the Nuni dialects.

This dissertation focuses on the overt marking of φ features encoded on perfective active auxiliaries in a group of Southern Italian dialects.

This thesis investigates the syntax of object marking in Sambaa and the Bantu languages in general, with particular focus on Swahili and Haya, as points of comparison.

The general objective of this thesis is to determine a typology of verbal derivation in Ethiopian Afro-asiatic languages.

Why do we have the languages that we speak in Europe today? When in European prehistory did these languages establish themselves, and what where the prehistoric mechanisms behind the formation of the historical European linguistic landscape?

This project focuses on a striking parallelism between two macro-groups of languages: southern Italian dialects and the so-called split-ergative languages, like Basque, Georgian, Dyirbal, Hindi/Urdu.

A central and much debated topic in the study of language acquisition concerns the nature of the learning mechanisms that are required. Are the computational and learning mechanisms that guide learning about language structure special and specific to language or humans?

This dissertation provides an overview of the phonological developments of the Qinghai-Gansu languages, comparing them to the reconstructed ancestral language.

This dissertation provides an up to date description of the Indo European lexical stock of Armenian (ca. 500 entries) with systematic inclusion of unused data that are found in Armenian dialects.

Set up in 1991, this unique project aims to identify and describe the common lexical heritage of the most important Indo-European languages and language branches. The project has thus far resulted in twelve volumes published as The Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series (Brill, Leiden).

The main question of this research project concerns the extent to which light verbs in West Germanic languages participate in processes of language change.

In this study, the formation of the Tocharian subjunctive is described, its use and meaning are analysed and its origins are investigated.

This dissertation investigates A'-dependencies in Standard German, Zurich German and Dutch where the dislocated constituent is indirectly, i.e. not transformationally, related to the position where it is interpreted. The analysis is carried out within the Principles & Parameters framework.

Ancient Greek was spoken in a large number of different dialects. Although we do not find direct evidence for syllabic liquids in any of our sources, comparative evidence shows that these sounds must have been present in Proto-Greek, and that they were retained until comparatively recently in the prehistory…

This dissertation focuses on the systematic vowel alternations displayed by the Proto-Germanic n-stems. The fact is, that many of these nouns now appear to have preserved the ablaut system of the Indo-European proto-language spoken some five millennia ago. In this respect, the n-stems are truly comparable…

On 26 June 2016 the Council of the Academia Europaea approved a class lists of scholars to be invited to accept membership at the Academia Europaea. Professor Lisa Cheng was elected for the section “Linguistic Studies”.

This dissertation attempts to describe the linguistic history of Hittite on the basis of a systematic etymological treatment of its entire inherited lexicon, precisely analyzing the phonological and morphological developments.

This dissertation provides an account of polar questions in Italian dialects from a typological, theoretical and empirical perspective.

Japanese was not always the language spoken in Japan. Researchers link the arrival of the language in Japan with the migration of farmers around 400 BC. Linguist Elisabeth de Boer has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant to carry out research on the further spread of the language in Japan.

Alwin Kloekhorst, working at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, has received a Vidi grant for his research on the break-up of the Indo-European language.

LUCL is pleased to announce that two Vrije Competitie Grants have been awarded to LUCL researchers. Prof.dr. Lisa Cheng and dr. Jenny Doetjes have been awarded a grant for their project 'Understanding questions'. Prof.dr. Michael Kemper (UvA) and prof.dr. Jos Schaeken have been awarded a grant for the…

The aim of the project is to unravel the genetic and contact relations between the indigenous languages of Mesoamerica (Mexico and western Central America) and the Middle Andes region (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia), as part of a larger endeavor to understand the historical process of the peopling of the Americas…

Research at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) focuses on linguistic variation and diversity.

There are over 7,000 languages in the world and over half of the world’s population is bilingual. But how do all these people use their language? And how do these languages differ from one another? Under the slogan of ‘Interconnecting linguistic diversity,’ the researchers from the Leiden University…

Italian Language and Linguistics at Leiden University draws on diachronic and synchronic perspectives to bring you an advanced qualification in Italian linguistics.

English Language and Linguistics at Leiden University focuses on English language usage and linguistics around the world, including in countries where English is spoken as a second language or as part of a mixed language.

This research programme brings together LUCL researchers focusing on theoretical and experimental linguistics. By using theoretical, experimental and digital tools and methods, these researchers seek to understand the nature of language, language acquisition, language variation, and how language is…

From 2 to 5 September 2015, Leiden served as the stage for one of the world’s largest linguistics conferences: the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE) 2015 Annual Meeting. Marianne Mithun, a professor at University of California, Santa Barbara and outgoing president of the SLE, is not surprised that…

Exploring new methods in comparing Sign Language corpora: Analysing cross-linguistic variation in the lexicon

Describing a new language for the first time is an exciting and challenging intellectual experience.

So far it has been impossible to compare large sets of syntactic constructions in large sets of languages systematically and automatically. The online availability of parallel text corpora and software tools to align, enrich, search and analyse them has the potential to make automatic massive systematic…

​​​​​​​The Research Lab for the Study of Heritage Languages of the Netherlands (HERLING) is a platform for research about heritage languages spoken in the Netherlands, with a focus on Turkish, Bahasa Indonesia, Spanish, Papiamento, Berber, Arabic and German. HERLING aims to bridge the gap between scientific…

This thesis is a sample-based typological study of formal and semantic patterns in terms for a selection of referring ("nominal") meanings.