This dissertation provides a description of the language Tadaksahak as it is spoken by the Idaksahak, a people group of about 30,000 living in the most eastern part of Mali and several isolated places in western Niger.

This research examines the social, political, and cultural forces that structure people’s responses towards accented speech, and further uses the accent as a focal point to theorize the interrelation between language and body.

Very generally speaking, this study aims at questioning and re-defining the mind-body epistemic problem within contemporary dance and art culture.

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

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

This book offers a linguistic anthropological analysis of multilingualism among the Matsigenka, Quechua, and Spanish languages on the coffee frontier of Southern Peru, set against the backdrop of economic transformation and deforestation in the world’s last great forest.

It’s impossible to avoid, even in the Netherlands: the US will soon be going to the polls. Where does it come from, this fascination with US elections? PhD candidate Bram Eenink explains.

On the 30th of June, Richard L. Boutwell successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Richard on this achievement!

The AAM-LR project aims at building a demonstrator of a web service that will help filed researchers to annotate audio- and video-recordings.

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.

By documenting lexical and morpho-syntactic patterns among P’urhepecha speakers in Mexico and the US diaspora, this project will investigate the sources of language variation. The ensuing online dialect atlas will serve as an online resource for speakers, learners and researchers of the language.

On the 12th of October, Fatemeh Tabassi Mofrad successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Fatemeh on this achievement!

America’s dominance of the world stage is coming to an end. These were the words of Professor Amitav Acharya in his guest lecture in The Hague on 5 February. ‘But the world really won’t be plunged into immediate chaos.’

The research focuses on the understanding of symbolic stratigraphy of the land (through time) from the worldview of the People of the Rain (one of the Indigenous Peoples of southern Mexico), by studying contemporary cultural heritage in communities of the Mixtec Highlands.

PhD defence

The aim of this research is to understand the linking of crises for the combination of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Professor Jenny Doetjes at Leiden University researches similarities and differences in languages, specifically in the area of numerals and quantifiers. Her research provides insight into language patterns, bu also in the working of the human brain. Inaugural lecture on 26 January.

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…

On the 9th of April, Manolis Fragkiadakis successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Manolis on this achievement!

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

On the 23rd of September, George Saad successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates George on this achievement!

The decades around 1800 constitute the seminal period of European nationalism. The lin­guistic corollary of this was the rise of standard language ideology, from Finland to Spain, and from Iceland to the Habsburg Empire. Amidst these international events, the case of Dutch in the Netherlands offers…

This book contextualises case studies across a wide variety of languages and cultures, crystallising key interrelationships between linguistic standardisation and prescriptivism, and between ideas and practices. It focuses on different traditions of standardisation and prescription throughout the world…

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.

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.

A linguistic test of hypotheses rooted in genetics and archaeology.

When literature, cultural aspects, and data-driven language learning meet in a classroom.

On February 20th, Gulnaz Sibgatullina succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Gulnaz on this great result.

On December 12th, Andreas Krogull succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Andreas on this great result.

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

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

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

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?

Studying languages enables you to unearth a lot of valuable information about humans: it reveals our history and explains cultural differences and it even illustrates the process of learning new information. The University is sharing its knowledge of and passion for languages in various new ways, including…

The main aim of this project is to provide a full analysis of the actual influence of French on Dutch in The Netherlands during the period of 1500 - 1900.

This thesis investigates the grammar of Gaahmg, a Nilo-Saharan, Eastern Sudanic language spoken in the Blue Nile Province of North Sudan. The comprehensive description provides an analysis of the phonology, morphology, and syntax. Ten texts of various genre are given to help illustrated the grammar…

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