This project investigates the influence that Arabic (esp. dialectal Arabic) has had on the Berber languages of Northern Africa.

The project

Dr Jenny Doetjes was appointed Professor of Semantics and Language Variation in February. During her professorship Dr. Doetjes wishes to focus on charting linguistic patterns between languages that, at first glance, seem to have little to do with each other.

International scholarly publisher Brill has released the most complete and up-to-date reference work on the Chinese language available today. Prof.dr. Rint Sybesma oversaw the project as Editor-in-Chief.

Dutch Studies is a unique bachelor’s programme in which you will quickly acquire fluency in spoken and written Dutch at a high academic level, at the same time gaining deep understanding of the culture and history of the Netherlands.

It may well be that only male zebra finches can sing, but the females are faster at learning to discriminate sounds. Leiden researchers publish their findings in the scientific journal Animal Behaviour.

The human brain stores not only individual words, but also all kinds of abstract information about these words. Research by Leiden linguists has shown that speakers have ready access to this information.

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

Leiden Law Practices (LLP)

In this dissertation, the types of context Dutch speakers need to interpret the poly-interpretable word ergens ‘somewhere/anywhere’ are studied.

Endangered languages can survive if they are taught properly to new speakers, such as people with a migrant background. This is what Professor by Special Appointment Felix Ameka will say in his inaugural lecture on 30 September. Dutch people can do their bit by being less ‘polite’ to people whose mother…

How might viola and string quartet playing in the performer-centered, moment-to-moment and communicative style heard on early recordings be brought about today?

Knowledge and culture subproject 2:

Getting started with active learning & teaching can be as simple as assessing on what is already accomplished. Here are some practical courses of action to begin experimenting with active learning, whether you are a teacher or responsible for the spaces.

Lecture, Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series

Language research generates a wealth of information about people: from our history and cultural differences to the way we learn. Leiden University shares its knowledge and passion for this topic via de MOOC on ‘Miracles of Human Languages’ and the web dossier on Language Diversity.

LUCL is glad to announce that two of its members have been awarded an NWO Vrije Competitie Grant.

The Language Learning Resource Centre (Leiden University) is organizing a one-day conference (June 5th, 2020) on the interplay between second language learning practice, theory, and research.

Continuous optimization is never easy: the exact solution is always a luxury demand and the theory of it is not always analytical and elegant.

Will Leiden be the first city to have wall poems in sign language? It will, if sign language researcher Victoria Nyst has her way. She recently started a crowdfunding campaign together with the Leiden Language Museum and the TEGEN-BEELD Foundation.

The challenge of achieving fast quantification in metabolomics is the presence of severe matrix effects during the MS analysis of complex samples.

Victoria Nyst's love for sign language was sparked when she accidentally ended up at a deaf school while studying African linguistics. The university lecturer has since been awarded a Vici grant to research the history of these languages.

This dissertation provides a grammatical description of Ghomara Berber, a Berber language spoken in North-West Morocco by about 10.000 people. The grammar consists of a description of the phonology, the morphology and the syntax. In the appendices a number of texts and a wordlist are included. The data…

The goal of the field of Applied Linguistics is to apply the findings and the techniques from research in linguistics to solve practical language-related problems in society.

For two decades, language experts were certain that babies were able to learn language rules from as young as the age of seven months. However, recent research carried out by a consortium of four Dutch baby labs led by researchers from Leiden cast doubts on this certainty. We spoke to researchers Andreea…

In the second semester of this academic year (February 2025), the Faculty of the Humanities will switch to Ans for digital exams. Several lecturers have already gained experience with the new platform through pilot exams. Two lecturers from Dutch Studies, Liesbet Winkelmolen and Myra Arends, share their…

This study explores the role of linguistic data in the reconstruction of Dolgan (pre)history by analyzing contact-induced changes and using them to infer information about the nature of the contact settings in which they occurred.

Important dates in the Academic Language Centre calendar

Please find here the BA- and MA-Courses taught on the subject of language learning at Leiden University.

The Academic Language Centre (ATC) is one of the cornerstones of Leiden University. Director Gea Hakker explains how this organisation is providing quality (online) language courses and meeting new demands.

Leiden is to have a new language museum in 2015, a public institute focusing on language in all its facets and where science and social developments come together for a broad public. It won't be in a building, but at different places in the city. Dynamic, contemporary, flexible and affordable. The details…

A large interdisciplinary NWO research project attempted to discover the cognitive origin of the human ability to learn linguistic rules. This is not so simple, according to linguist Andreea Geambaşu and her colleagues. PhD defence on 11 December.

That's just learning parrot-fashion. This was the argument with which the proposal to establish a language lab at Leiden University was rejected in 1962. But six years later, the language lab was launched. And now the Academic Language Lab is celebrating its 50-year anniversary.

What languages do you speak? According to Felienne Hermans, ‘Python’ could be an answer to this question. Hermans studies how people learn to program at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) of Leiden University. In an article of the NewScientist she explains why programming is similar…

For his PhD project, computer scientist Manolis Fragkiadakis is developing a tool that can compare videos of sign language corpora. This would make it possible to detect differences between sign languages and prevent translation errors. Ultimately, the tool could be used to compare sign languages from…