Conference

This project aims to open up the pre-Islamic linguistic history of Arabia through the systematic study of the Thamudic inscriptions within a digital humanities framework.

The University Executive Board has appointed Maarten Kossmann as professor for Berber Studies as of April 1, 2017. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics management team would like to congratulate Maarten with this appointment, which will strengthen LUCL’s descriptive linguistic research in general…

Language Use, Usage Guides and Linguistic Norms will be of interest to scholars of language use in both the past and the present, as well as to anyone interested in the interplay between actual language use and prescriptive attitudes towards language.

This thesis describes the use of the evolutionary approach in the study of language change, aiming to provide a better insight in the mechanisms that play a role in language change and to validate this approach in the field of language change.

Humanities, Centre for Linguistics

Conference, Symposium

*This page is under construction*

This project investigates the rich linguistic history of the crucial language groups in East Africa and includes a search for words that indicate earlier lost languages. These outcomes, combined with recent archaeological and genetic research, will contribute to a new understanding of East Africa’s…

The policies relating to language pursued by European monarchies and states have been widely studied, but far less attention has been given to their linguistic and cultural policies in territories outside their own borders.

This project seeks to close the gap between the three main players in the field of prescriptivism: the linguists themselves, the prescriptivists (as writers of usage guides) and those who depend upon such manuals.

On the 23rd of September, George Saad successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates George on this achievement!

This project intends to provide an integrated linguistic assessment of the hypothesised migration route of the Tocharians.

Collaborative linguistic research on indigenous languages of Ecuador: description, documentation & materials

Jochem van den Boogert defended his thesis on 18 November 2015

This research profile area brings together descriptive, historical and theoretical linguistics, as well as psycho- and neurolinguistics.

Language offers new insights into our history, cultural differences, migration, and the way in which our brain processes information. This knowledge can in turn help us understand what it means to be human, as well as opening the way to many practical applications. In order to realise these goals, linguists…

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.

For a brief period Leiden University was the hub of the world of linguistics. The 48th annual conference of the Societas Linguistica Europaea was held here at the start of September. Almost 600 linguists came from all corners of the world to the city of discoveries to attend this prestigious event.

On November 1st, Min Liu succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Min on this great result.

Promotor: Prof.dr. T.H.W. Bäck

This book celebrates Maarten Mous, professor of African Linguistics at Leiden University.

Form and Function in Greek Grammar. Linguistic Contributions to the Study of Greek Literature is a new book, written by Albert Rijksbaron. Rijksbaron is internationally known as one of the leading scholars of the Ancient Greek language, whose work has exerted a strong and lasting influence on the scholarly…

Lexicographical description of Greek; production of Greek-Dutch dictionary

This proposal aims at the construction of a comprehensive and authoritative scientific grammar for Dutch and Frisian in the form of a virtual language institute: het Taalportaal/the Language Portal.

Promotor: P.D. Grünwald

An integrated approach of physiological concepts, advanced statistical approaches and large clinical datasets.

Which features characterize speakers’ voices, and how are these features determined by what a speaker is saying?

This study describes religion in Java.

The main goal of this project is to answer the question: how did Dutch acquire its own, distinctive linguistic characteristics?

How does the human mind work? Why are some speeches totally persuasive, and others less so? How do children acquire language so effortlessly? During your BA in Linguistics you will be immersed in the intellectual universe of language and communication and its profound implications for every aspect of…

This dissertation provides a systematic description of English and Afrikaans verbal pseudo-coordination and a formal analysis couched in the Minimalist program.

Studying Sumerian grammar in your free time: Bram Jagersma did it. He described centuries-old Sumerian using a modern method he devised himself. For this PhD research he was awarded the De La Court Award for Independent Research by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science (KNAW).

This dissertation addresses the semantics of pluractional verbs in Hausa.

The project aims at highlighting and strengthening Dutch research into the diversity of the world’s languages from a historic and a cognitive perspective.

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

A fascinating description of a global language, A Grammar of Mandarin by Jeroen Wiedenhof combines broad perspectives with illuminating depth.

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

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?

The aim of this research was to establish if Ebeling's semiotactic theory and method of semiotactic analysis, as described in his works Syntax and Semantics (1978), Een Inleiding tot de Syntaxis (1994) and Semiotaxis, over Theoretische en Nederlandse Syntaxis (2006), could be applied to Modern Japanese…

This study analyses the prehistory of a northeastern Siberian population, the Sakha, from both a molecular-genetic and a linguistic perspective.

This thesis investigates the historical development of Japanese pitch accent.

Linguistic research on a unique collection of Dutch letters allowed us to gain access to the every-day language of people from various walks of life. Private letters by men, women and even children have been elaborately explored in the Letters as Loot researchprogramme, initiated and directed by prof.…

This project investigates the influence that Arabic (esp. dialectal Arabic) has had on the Berber languages of Northern Africa.

'Every year the courses are different, and there are new things to learn.' The 6th Leiden Summer School in Languages and Linguistics from 18-29 July this year has attracted 120 participants, 90 international and 30 from the Netherlands.