LIAS researchers working in the field of linguistics hold dual appointments in LIAS and the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL).

Documenting and describing languages of the world.

Are you thinking about studying Linguistics? Learn more and watch the programme presentation.

Are you thinking about studying Linguistics: Translation? Learn more and watch the introduction videos and the programme presentation.

The research master’s programme in Linguistics at Leiden University combines leading expertise with a flexible programme format.

Studying the underlying principles of the nature of language.

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…

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…

How do we process language and speech? How do we integrate information at different levels – intonation, sentence structure, meaning, tone, words, sounds - and how does information at one level interact with information at another level?

Italian Language and Linguistics at Leiden University draws on diachronic and synchronic perspectives to bring you an advanced qualification in Italian linguistics.

In the one-year Linguistics specialisation programme you will be able to focus on a specific thematic or disciplinary route, reflecting the linguistics expertise present at Leiden University.

Chinese Linguistics at Leiden University offers you an excellent opportunity to concentrate on the different aspects of the languages of China, especially their sounds and syntax.

German Language and Linguistics at Leiden University offers in-depth knowledge of German linguistic theory and practice.

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

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…

French Language and Linguistics at Leiden University offers a wide array of courses covering theoretical and applied linguistics, including language acquisition, syntax, and semantics.

Are you thinking about studying Linguistics Research MA? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

Study information, Online Experience

Platform for research about heritage languages spoken in the Netherlands

Psycholinguistic research

This dissertation attempts to describe the linguistic history of Hittite on the basis of a systematic etymological treatment of its entire inherited lexicon, precisely analyzing the phonological and morphological developments.

The research programme Formal Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics brings together LUCL researchers who focus mainly on formal theoretical and experimental linguistics.

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

Describing a new language for the first time is an exciting and challenging intellectual experience.

Investigating specific language and speech behaviour of people.

There are over 7,000 languages in the world and over half of the world’s population is bilingual. But how do all these people use their language? And how do these languages differ from one another? Under the slogan of ‘Interconnecting linguistic diversity,’ the researchers from the Leiden University…

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.

This edited book presents case-studies and reflections on the role of languages and their analytic study in development practices across four regions: Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific.

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.

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

This book addresses the definition of history and how people are influenced by it.

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.

Linguistic Choices in the Contemporary City focuses on how individuals navigate conversation in highly diversified contexts and provides a broad overview of state of the art research in urban sociolinguistics across the globe.

The Latin language is a descendant of the widespread Indo-European family of languages. Recent ancient genetic studies have helped shed light on the likelihood that the Indo-European languages spread into a Europe that had already been populated by farmers for thousands of years.

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.

So far it has been impossible to compare large sets of syntactic constructions in large sets of languages systematically and automatically. The online availability of parallel text corpora and software tools to align, enrich, search and analyse them has the potential to make automatic massive systematic…

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.

Conference