The policies relating to language pursued by European monarchies and states have been widely studied, but far less attention has been given to their linguistic and cultural policies in territories outside their own borders.

This project seeks to close the gap between the three main players in the field of prescriptivism: the linguists themselves, the prescriptivists (as writers of usage guides) and those who depend upon such manuals.

Indo-European is the name of the language family to which English belongs, along with many sub-families such as Germanic languages and Romance languages. In this course, you will delve into the structure and origins of these branches, the oldest languages belonging to the language family, linguistic…

On the 27th of June, Timothy Mac Hadjah successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Timothy on this achievement!

On the 16th of February 2022 Mr. Yunus Sulistyono successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This project intends to provide an integrated linguistic assessment of the hypothesised migration route of the Tocharians.

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…

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.

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.

Fokelien Kootstra defended her thesis on 23 April 2019

On November 1st, Min Liu succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Min on this great result.

The history of sign languages of deaf people is severely understudied. The historical linguistics of sign languages offers a fundamentally new perspective on the history of human languages. This project addresses the dearth of knowledge about historical sign language linguistics through a large-scale…

How do sign languages change and spread over time, and how is this influenced by their transmission history?

This book celebrates Maarten Mous, professor of African Linguistics at Leiden University.

Form and Function in Greek Grammar. Linguistic Contributions to the Study of Greek Literature is a new book, written by Albert Rijksbaron. Rijksbaron is internationally known as one of the leading scholars of the Ancient Greek language, whose work has exerted a strong and lasting influence on the scholarly…

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

Humanities, Centre for Linguistics

A central and much debated topic in the study of language acquisition concerns the nature of the learning mechanisms that are required. Are the computational and learning mechanisms that guide learning about language structure special and specific to language or humans?

This study analyses the prehistory of a northeastern Siberian population, the Sakha, from both a molecular-genetic and a linguistic perspective.

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.

This project combines an extensive new open database on linguistic distributions, spatial modelling and areal linguistics in order to disentangle the roles of social and environmental factors on the emergence of linguistic diversity patterns of South America.

On the 28th of June, Laura Smorenburg successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Laura on this achievement!

This project aims at documenting the Haitian Creole varieties spoken by Haitian migrants in Cuba and the Dominican Republic’s Samaná Peninsula.

Lecture

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.…

This book presents a comprehensive description of the grammar of Logba, one of the fourteen Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) languages spoken by approximately 7,500 speakers on the South-Eastern frontier of the Ghana-Togo border. It is the outcome of fifteen months research in Logba speaking communities.

The global population speaks approximately 7,000 different languages and approximately half of the world’s population is bilingual. The unique orthographic characteristics of different languages can help us to gain insight into the seemingly simple process of transforming written to spoken words (i.e.,…

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

This study presents a full descriptive account of the grammar of Mualang, covering the major features of phonology and morphosyntax as well as issues related to pragmatics.

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

This thesis investigates the grammar of Sheko, an Omotic language spoken in southwest Ethiopia.

This study offers a comprehensive but balanced grammatical analysis of Ik (Icetod), Northeast Uganda’s last thriving Kuliak language.

This book presents the first comprehensive study of Dime, an endangered Omotic language spoken by about 5400 speakers in south-west Ethiopia. The study presents analysis of the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language as well as a sample of ten texts and an extensive word list.

This dissertation presents a comprehensive description of Xinka, an indigenous language from southeastern Guatemala. The description is based on a missionary grammar that is titled Arte de la lengua szinca and was written by the priest Manuel Maldonado de Matos around 1773.

'Every year the courses are different, and there are new things to learn.' The 6th Leiden Summer School in Languages and Linguistics from 18-29 July this year has attracted 120 participants, 90 international and 30 from the Netherlands.

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.

This book is the first grammar on Ternate Malay, a local variety of Malay spoken on the island of Ternate, North-Moluccas, Indonesia.

This thesis investigates the historical development of Japanese pitch accent.

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-.

This dissertation presents a description of Sandawe, a Khoisan language spoken by approximately 60 000 speakers in Dodoma Region, Tanzania.