This project explores how Muslim authorities and writers use Russian to transmit Islamic contents, and whether this leads to a specific

Like any language, the natural sign languages (henceforth: SLs) of deaf communities differ from each other in their grammars and lexicons. A growing number of studies indicates that SLs make use of the gestures of hearing speakers to build linguistic structure. This implies that variation and similarities…

On the 16th of December, Yachan Liang successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Yachan on this achievement!

This PhD project investigates what the universal and variable morphosyntactic properties of linguistic expressions of otherness are and how they can be modelled theoretically.

This thesis discusses the constructions relevant to Object Shift from the intonational perspective, by presenting experimental data from all the Scandinavian languages.

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.

The Dutch phrase ‘ijs en weder dienende’ (literally, ‘ice and weather serving’) is a good example of what is known as a participle clause and is perhaps one of the most unfathomable grammatical constructions in Dutch. For what (or who) is serving whom (or what)? It actually means ‘ice and weather permitting’.…

Exhibition

In the new video series 'The World of Linguistics', alumni and researchers talk about their passion for their field. University lecturer Maria Del Carmen Parafita Couto speaks about bilingualism.

What can languages spoken in the Lesser Sunda Islands today tell us about the histories of its various population groups?

PhD student Camil Staps is continuing his academic career in Berlin. He receives a Rubicon grant to do research there on demonstrative pronouns.

Study information

Study information

On 4 June 2018, students of the Forensic Speech Science master’s course visited the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) in The Hague. They were presented with practical examples, such as speech research with voice recordings of suspects. Forensic phonetics is a young, rapidly developing discipline…

Sara Petrollino, a university lecturer in linguistics, strongly believes that language influences the way we see the world. An NWO Open Competition (XS) grant will enable her to test this hypothesis among the Ethiopian Hamar people. ‘The idea that everyone thinks in geometric shapes is culturally de…

Prof. Willem Adelaar has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant to do research on Central and Southern American Indian languages.

In The Golden Mean of Languages, Alisa van de Haar sheds new light on the debates regarding the form and status of the vernacular in the early modern Low Countries, where both Dutch and French were local tongues. The fascination with the history, grammar, spelling, and vocabulary of Dutch and French…

This dissertation aims at discussing the nature and the linguistic factors assumed responsible for speech intelligibility problems of Sudanese learners of English.

This PhD project investigates how grammatical features and lexical elaboration in Fulfulde Juguureere reflect aspects of cattle culture.

How is social cognition shaped by our knowledge of language and stories?

Postdoc and linguist Evelyn Bosma receives the Keetje Hodshon Prize for her dissertation. For her research on the multilingualism of Frisian children, Bosma previously won the Klokhuis Science Prize and the Campus Fryslân Science Prize.

A friendly chat is more complicated than you might think. As soon as the other person finishes talking, you already have an answer ready. But how do we know when it's time to change turns? University lecturer Johanneke Caspers has been awarded an NWO Open Competition grant to investigate the role of…

LUCL member prof. dr. Holger Gzella has been elected as member of the Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe).

This project creates a comprehensive audiovisual documentation of the Sanye language, the sociolinguistic situation, and cultural practices of the Sanye (Dahalo) community in coastal Kenya.

This PhD project investigates specific types of allusions used by Russian native speakers, namely references to classical Russian literature. The research includes the analysis of 1) how native speakers use allusions, 2) what type of discourse allusions are frequently used, and 3) how we can implement…

In this dissertation, a comprehensive portrait of the American-born Quaker Lindley Murray (1745–1826) is painted and the influence of Murray’s Quakerism on his language use is investigated by analyzing a corpus of 262 of his unpublished private letters.

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.

This PhD project mainly investigates in what way (i.e., serial or parallel mode or other mode) the parser processes the Mandarin Chinese. In addition, are there any specific linguistic features governing the decoding of Mandarin Chinese that are different from other languages? Are there any processing…

Lecture, Descriptive Linguistic Seminars

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research has awarded dr. Lucien van Beek a Veni grant. This grant offers young researchers the possibility to develop their innovative ideas for a period of three or four years. The awarded research proposal focuses on the Ancient Greek dialects' contribution…

Alex Elias, alumnus of the Research Master Linguistics, has won the prestigious Jan Brouwer Thesis Award for his thesis. Elias, who is currently working as a PhD-student at UC Berkeley, wrote his thesis under supervision of prof. dr. Marian Klamer.

A new challenge for Felix Ameka. The senior lecturer at the Centre for Linguistics has been appointed professor by special appointment of Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Diversity in the World. ‘I am looking forward to promoting ethnolinguistic diversity and vitality.’

Conference

Dialogue is a multi-dimensional communication mechanism whose processes can only be examined by means of an interdisciplinary approach.

This project investigates which metaphors are problematic in machine translation, when, why, and for whom.

If you want to follow a full academic programme, the next step after obtaining your bachelor’s is a master’s degree (MA) at a Dutch or international university. And there may be no better place for your further master’s study than Leiden University!

The Summer School in Languages and Linguistics at Leiden University has been a yearly highlight since 2006.

Research at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) focuses on linguistic variation and diversity. In order to create more awareness and scientific understanding of this topic, research activities are clustered around six (overlapping) umbrella programmes. Many of our researchers are active…

A new publication that brings together perspectives on language contact phenomena across temporal and spatial dimensions.

Within the Linguistics specialisation, you can choose one of the suggested thematic routes. Depending on the theme of your choice, the programme prepares you for a career in various fields, such as speech technology, artificial intelligence, education, language documentation and language policy.