This dissertation provides a description of Konso, a Cushitic language spoken by about 250,000 speakers in the South-West Ethiopia.

This study proposes a theory for the encoding of specificity and definiteness in the Chinese nominal based on Cantonese, Mandarin and Wenzhou data.

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

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

On March 12th, Jonathan Brown succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Jonathan on this great result.

This project aims to revisit the ways in which religious minorities in the Middle East participated in, contributed to, and opposed the Arab nationalism of the post-war years, when the British and French ruled the region via the Mandates. Research question: How did religious minorities in the Middle…

When combined and used by specific people located in time and place, words can express something more than, different from, or even the opposite of their dictionary meanings.

The largest international conference on English historical linguistics is coming to Leiden. From 7 June to 11 June 2021, the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) organises the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL-21). Due to Covid measures, the conference takes…

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.

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.

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

This project aims at investigating the syntactic role of focus in ellipsis across languages.

This 862-page monograph is a grammar of Thangmi, an endangered Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the districts of Dolakha and Sindhupalcok in central-eastern Nepal.

Grammatical gender is famously the most puzzling of the grammatical categories. We have a solid typology of gender systems, yet exciting and unexpected patterns keep turning up which defy easy classification and straightforward analysis. Some of these question, stretch or threaten to cross the outer…

A synchronic description of the endangered Slovene dialect spoken in the Gailtal valley in Carinthia, Austria.

This study looks at the diverse phonological systems found within Central Chadic, and reconstructs the phonological system of their ancestor language.

Umberto Selva, a Leiden graduate of the Research MA program of Linguistics, has received for his thesis the international award for best MA thesis in the field of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics of the year 2015.

Dr. Janet Grijzenhout (Universität Konstanz) was appointed Professor English Linguistics and will be working at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL).

This doctoral thesis elaborates Langacker’s reference-point model by applying it to lexical semantics.

The current study focuses on Walpole’s social network and the language as contained in the letters of the network members.

The goal of the MODOMA-project is to create a computer model of language acquisition.

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

What categories exist in the languages of pastoralists? Do these semantic concepts reflect universal or languagespecific tendencies? What (environment? culture?) governs the similarities (or the differences) attested crosslinguistically in cattle colour systems?

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

This research project focuses on the extended documentation and investigation of these non-Austronesian (‘Papuan’) languages.

On 1 August, Egbert Fortuin has been appointed Professor of Russian Language and Linguistics. After a five-year term as vice-dean of the Faculty Board, he is eager to fully devote himself to the study programme. His appointment can therefore be summarised in three words: 'I am back'.

This dissertation sheds light on politics, education and linguistic identity by studying the case of the College of Jerusalem, founded by the Brothers of the Christian Schools.

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-…

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

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

This study presents the first systematic investigation and detailed theoretical analysis of the temporal interpretations of sentences with bare (aspectually unmarked) predicates in Mandarin.

This dissertation is a comprehensive description of the Jiăomùzú dialects. These dialects belong to the Tibetan-Birmese language of the rGyalrong spoken in the province Sìchuā, China.

This dissertation explores the history of the language of a manuscript known as Tönnies Fonne's Russian-German Phrasebook (Pskov 1607).