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

This project looks at how the native language influences processing mechanisms of non-native language(s) as well has how it influences brain structure and functional connectivity.

On the 16th of September, Bert van Pinxteren successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Bert on this achievement!

University lecturers who are in the process of obtaining the Basic Teaching Qualification (BKO) and who teach programmes in English will also need the Basic Qualification in English Language Skills certificate, which guarantees a basic standard of English.

In the master’s programme in Dutch Language, Culture and Society at Leiden University you will study the language and culture of the Netherlands from the Dutch Golden Age – the time of Rembrandt and Vondel – until today’s dynamic and muliticultural society.

Across cultures, parents help their children master the social and linguistic codes needed in adult life. Recent research on language socialization found important cross-cultural differences, pointing out the need for more diversity for a full understanding of this process. Deaf communities form…

On 3 December 2019, Hanna Bosdriesz defended her thesis 'Furthering the fight against impunity in Latin America: the contributions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to domestic accountability processes'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. L.J. van den Herik and Prof. M.A.H. van…

Knowledge and culture subproject 1:

Across cultures, parents help their children master the social and linguistic codes needed in adult life. Recent research on language socialization found important cross-cultural differences, pointing out the need for more diversity for a full understanding of this process.

At LUCL, researchers aim to contribute to a comprehensive and informed perspective on the human past.

Study information, Online Experience

From Sunday 8 till Tuesday 17 January 2023, NVIC organizes a new edition of the TAFL course. This intensive, interactive course is developed for (future) teachers of Arabic. It addresses both the practical aspects of teaching Arabic as a foreign language as well as the underlying linguistic and cognitive…

This thesis investigates the processing of words written in Japanese kanji and Chinese hànzì, i.e. logographic scripts.

The research programme Language Use in Past and Present brings together linguists within LUCL whose central focus is both on actual language data, including language use in earlier stages of the language, and, taking a variationist perspective, on language change in various aspects.

The Leiden Summer School in Languages and Linguistics offers a varied program of specialised courses in Descriptive linguistics, in Chinese, Germanic, Indo-European, Indian, Iranian, Semitic languages and linguistics, as well as a number of introductory linguistic courses.

In this article Fisher, Klein & Codjo introduce the FOCUSdate Project and they show how the sentiment data provide unique abilities to analyze Russia's and Iran's reactions to US policies and events and NGO human rights campaigns.

Study information

A project on phonology, phonetics, and the space between them.

A theoretical project on the insights gained by human (including infant), nonhuman animal and computational studies on artificial grammar learning; identifying the critical questions for future research by developing novel experimental and computational approaches to address these issues.

This project examines how speakers store and process regular pitch variation.

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 project, the hypothesis that language contact crucially impacts the development of spatial grammar and phonology is investigated.

Are you planning to register for an English taught Master’s Degree Programme after your Bachelor’s programme? In order to assess what your current level of English is, you are invited to complete an Online Oxford Quick Placement Test.

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.

Lecture, Interactionality seminars

This book presents an in-depth grammatical description of Kumzari, a mixed language spoken in remote villages on the Musandam Peninsula in northern Oman.

My research addresses the function of the much-debated particle -nā in Biblical Hebrew, often translated with “please”, from the point of view of the most important ancient Bible translations (Greek, Syriac, Latin). It combines textual criticism, translation technique, discourse pragmatics, and the…

The CNaVT exam is the official, international exam of Dutch as a Foreign Language for all who learn Dutch all over the world. The Catholic University of Leuven organises the exam. The Dutch Language Union has commissioned this collaboration.

Science, Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS)

Alternative perspectives and sources of colonial literature haven’t received much attention before now. School books have long ignored the violence that accompanies colonialsm. How can we paint an honest picture?

Research has shown that the impact of feedback can be very powerful on second language acquisition. However, how to provide adaptive feedback on speaking skills in foreign languages and how to provide differentiated support in secondary schools in regular secondary schools classes of often 25-30 students?…

The whole world gets raw materials from Latin America, but at the expense of nature. Håvar Solheim researches the role of organised crime in this environmental crime and Soledad Valdivia researches sustainable urban initiatives in Latin America. What do these university lecturers think the future of…

This collection considers such issues as the cognitive, linguistic and emotional benefits of speaking two languages, the perceptions, attitudes and issues relating to identity in minority language areas, and the number of grammatical aspects amongst those who speak these minority languages.

There is a linguistic hypothesis that states that all languages from Europe to India originate from a single mother language: Proto-Indo-European. This language is thought to have been spoken thousands of years ago. Researcher Alwin Kloekhorst plans to use linguistic genealogy to study the very first…

The aim of this thesis was to study the link between hearing loss, language skills, and social functioning in deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children. Sufficient language skills are an essential prerequisite to develop appropriate communication skills, in order to join in conversations with others.…

Conference

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

This project aims at describing the Khoisan languages !Ora (Korana/Griqua) and !Ui of South Africa.

The Leiden HANDS!Lab for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies hosts research activities in the area of sign language linguistics and Deaf studies, with a focus on Africa. In addition to various research projects, we have our Deaf studies lecture Series in International Sign and offer various regular and…

The left is gaining more and more ground on the political map of Latin America, with the elections in Colombia as the most recent example. But what’s behind this pull to the left? Professor of Modern Latin American History Patricio Silva talks about the current political situation in the region.

This dissertation aims at enhancing our knowledge of whether a CI provides sufficient access to auditory speech input to acquire verbal morphology by comparing outcomes of CI children to those of their normal hearing peers and to those of children with specific language impaired (SLI).

On the 12th of December, Eleanor Dutton successfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Eleanor on this achievement.

Knowledge and culture subproject 2:

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

In the Netherlands approximately 130 out of 700 secondary schools offer a bilingual stream. However, research about CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) is limited. With her dissertation Evelyn van Kampen (PhD student at ICLON) wants to contribute to the understanding of the nature and range…

Literature, Language, and Multiculturalism in Scandinavia and the Low Countries presents a ground-breaking comparative approach to the study of multicultural literature.