Publishing about your research is a key aspect of your career as a researcher; the majority of research publications are written in English. When applying for research funding, too, it is very important to ensure that your application is written in clear, accessible English. Maria Sherwood-Smith, Academic…

Classics alumnus Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer has won the Libris Literature Prize this year with his book La Superba. The Libris Literature Prize is one of the most prestigious awards in Dutch literature.

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-…

Man is nature's mind-reading champion: we are better able than any other living beings to empathise with others. This comes in part from our story-telling culture, according to Max van Duijn. PhD defence 20 April.

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

At LUCL, researchers have established the Leiden Hands!Lab for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies.

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.

On Monday 21 November a lecture was given at Leiden Law School of Leiden University by Belgian Minister of Justice Koen Geens and Dutch Minister of Justice and Security Ard van der Steur in which they talked about international judicial cooperation. The lecture focussed on cooperation between the Netherlands…

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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.

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

On October 31st, Paul Noorlander succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Paul on this great result.

On the 26th of September, Cosmas Rai Amenorvi successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Cosmas on this achievement!

This thesis presents a thorough survey of the central aspects of the phonology of Shaoxing Chinese from a synchronic perspective and on the basis of recent theoretical phonological developments, with the secondary goal of casting some light on current issues in Modern Chinese (Mandarin).

This is a Special Issue of the peer-reviewed 'Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics (DuJAL)’, which focuses on promoting Dutch and Belgian work in applied linguistics among an international audience, but also welcomes contributions from other countries.

This research profile area brings together descriptive, historical and theoretical linguistics, as well as psycho- and neurolinguistics.

This dissertation aims to explore how university students use mobile technology for their self-directed language learning and investigate factors influencing their self-directed learning with mobile technology.

The Dutch Center for Travel Writing Studies s a scientific center that develops and coordinates initiatives to promote research into travel writing. It actively seeks contact with external (scientific and social) partners to collaborate on issues surrounding cultural / national identity, cultural contact…

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

This thesis presents a detailed description of the phonology, the tone system and the grammar of Liko, a Bantu language spoken by about 70,000 people in the northeastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It provides numerous examples.

In this article, the authors summarise the literature on the effects of multilevel governance on governments’ policy responses to Covid-19.

Nadine Akkerman's book Invisible Agents is the very first study to analyse the role of early modern women spies. The book foregrounds the agency of early-modern women, offering a corrective to the gender bias implicit in modern historiography.

On the 13th of November, Hanna Fricke successfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Hanna on this achievement.

Tonal bilinguals of two closely related Chinese dialects are amazing people. They handle two tonal systems in their mind; their two vocabularies are from closely related dialects, and they write translation equivalents with common Chinese characters. Their unique language situation makes their mind…

On December 18th, Viktorija Kostadinova succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Viktorija on this great result.

This month, the volume Reading Russian Literature, 1980-2024, edited by Otto Boele and Dorine Schellens, was published at Palgrave Macmillan.

About 90 per cent of Austronesian and Papuan languages are under threat of soon becoming extinct. Marian Klamer is the only professor in the world who researches both these language groups. She records languages before they disappear and sheds new light on the history of Indonesia. Inaugural lecture…

Dit rapport maakt deel uit van het project Receptenboek burgerparticipatie in opdracht van de Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (RCE) en met steun van het Fonds voor Cultuurparticipatie.

In this project we study the properties of statistical- and rule-learning mechanisms in relation to the acquisition and evolution of language. We ask to what extent these mechanisms are unique to humans - or to human language - by comparing the acquisition of vocal structure in two species: humans (infants)…

The Special Issue of the European Journal of Applied Linguistics on ‘Language Ideologies: Old Questions, New Perspectives’ aims to offer diverse insights on language ideologies with a focus on methodological and theoretical questions.

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

The high standards set by the Academic Language Centre are attested by the following quality labels and memberships.

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…

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?

When it comes to literature, people mostly talk about what characters see or hear. Rarely is it about what they smell. That’s a shame, thinks university lecturer Jan van Dijkhuizen. He has been awarded an Open Competition grant from NWO to expand academic knowledge about scent in literature, and to…

The languages of the Mbam-et-Inoubou District of the Centre Region of Cameroon have a unique position in Bantu linguistics. Being in between