The master’s programme in Dutch linguistics at Leiden University provides you with a deep understanding of the Dutch language and the multifaceted research into the structure and use of the Dutch language. During the programme you will not only gain in-depth knowledge of Dutch linguistics, but also…

The purpose of this programme is to join knowledge and insights from linguistics, literary analysis, and rhetoric, for the purpose of developing a set of methods for the stylistic investigation of any type of text in Dutch.

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.…

How did common people write in the late eighteenth century? Little is yet known on this topic, since our knowledge is mainly based on printed texts written by a small part of the (male) elite population. This dissertation – written from a sociolinguistic point of view – gives us new insights into late-…

The Dutch prefix ge- in historical perspective gives first of all a general account of the development of the word formation processes involving ge- in which special attention is paid to the participial ge-.

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

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.

In this dissertation, a corpus of 595 seventeenth-century letters (mainly private ones) written between 1664 and 1672 is examined from a sociolinguistic perspective.

In this dissertation, the types of context Dutch speakers need to interpret the poly-interpretable word ergens ‘somewhere/anywhere’ are studied.

More than a thousand 17th- and 18th-century Dutch letters from seized ships are now available online. The letters are a gold mine for researchers wanting to study the everyday language used by men and women during this period.

Leiden University researchers have discovered by chance a note from 1783 in Papiamento. They are working on a linguistic study on confiscated Dutch letters. The ‘Letters as loot’ project is headed by Professor Marijke van der Wal.

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.

Lecture

Leiden has the most highly regarded China Studies programme in Europe. But how did this knowledge find its way specifically to Leiden? For his PhD research Koos Kuiper delved into the unique history of the start of this unique programme.

The linguistic project constitutes the connection between the two other subprojects. It consists of two parts.

Lecture

Terms used by literary critics in characterizing the style of novels are often impressionistic (‘baroque’, ‘austere’, ‘vivid’, ‘cerebral’ etc.). Foundations for such evaluations are usually not provided. A scientific way of studying and explaining style is lacking in present day Dutch Studies. Suzanne…

Lexicographical description of Greek; production of Greek-Dutch dictionary

The project Going Dutch investigates why the link between being or becoming Dutch, and knowledge of Standard Dutch is so often taken for granted in public discourse, by diving into its historical roots.

Lecture

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.

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…

This dissertation for the first time provides a detailed description of Benchnon, a language spoken by approximately 200.000 people in Southwest Ethiopia.

The MA Neerlandistiek/Dutch Studies at Leiden University provides you with an international view on the Dutch language and culture. You will be able to study the full breadth of Dutch studies: from the Middle Ages to today.

This dissertation provides a description of Makonde, a Bantu language spoken in Tanzania.

This thesis investigates the historical development of Japanese pitch accent.

​​​​​​​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 study investigates the perception and production of emotional prosody by native and non-native listeners and speakers, i.e. Chinese and Dutch listeners and speakers, including Dutch L2 learners of Chinese.

In the Bachelor's programme Dutch Language and Culture at Leiden University you will learn to analyse how people use the Dutch language, culture and media and to place it in an international perspective.

Language is a little bit like owning a mobile phone. We use it all the time, but we don’t really understand how it works. Where is language located in our brain? Do all humans have language? These and many other questions will be answered by professor Marc van Oostendorp in the MOOC Miracles of Human…

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.

Linguist Willem Adelaar was appointed to Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion on October 1st. On that very same day he celebrated his 43-year connection to Leiden University. Adelaar has an impressive track record in the field of indigenous, and often endangered, Amerindian languages.

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…

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 Laiseang archiving project ensures the preservation of unique records of languages in the region which have been gathered by more than two dozen linguists at, and in collaboration with Dutch universities over the last 40 years.

In the master’s programme in Dutch Discourse Studies at Leiden University you will study rhetoric and argumentation, and you will specifically focus on research into pragmatics, stylistics, genre research and persuasion.

In the master’s programme in Older Dutch literature at Leiden University you will study Dutch literature from the Middle Ages (1100-1550) until the Golden Age and Enlightenment (1550-1800). During the programme you will develop a vision on the value of the Dutch literary heritage.

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.

During the master’s programme in Modern Dutch Literature at Leiden University you will learn to scientifically analyse literary texts, as well as other Dutch cultural texts, such as those found in hiphop songs and diaries.

This thesis attempts to describe the entire corpus of Latino-Punic inscriptions, found in Tripolitania.

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

The present study comprises a classification and analysis of the syntax of the non-verbal clause in Qumran Hebrew, i.e. the linguistic variety (or varieties) found in the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls. The corpus consists of the non-biblical texts written in Hebrew; biblical texts and texts written in…

Fokelien Kootstra defended her thesis on 23 April 2019

Barend Beekhuizen's dissertation has won the 2016 AVT/Anéla (Dutch Linguistic Association and Society for Applied Linguistics) dissertation prize!