This project investigates the languages spoken by elementary school children in Leiden: which languages or varieties do they use, what is their level of competence and in what domains do they use them?

How can a CLIL approach, with a focus on disciplinary literacies, improve the teaching of the LLA programme’s literary component in senior bilingual education (TTO)?

In the Netherlands approximately 130 out of 700 secondary schools offer a bilingual stream. However, research about CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) is limited. With her dissertation Evelyn van Kampen (PhD student at ICLON) wants to contribute to the understanding of the nature and range…

Beauty is a central concept in the Italian cultural imagination throughout its history and in virtually all its manifestations. It particularly permeates the domains that have governed the construction of Italian identity: literature and language.

Knowledge and culture subproject 1:

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.

A project on phonology, phonetics, and the space between them.

What is the effect of a dynamic training in children’s inductive reasoning skills and how is it related to children’s school performances and language development.

From the smallest level of interaction among families and close friends, over the meso-level of schools, shops, churches, religious communities and companies, to the highest level of nation-states and international organisations: Language Policy and Planning (LPP) is everywhere!

How does Russia use propaganda and what characterises Russian propaganda in terms of language and argumentation?

Languages of The Hague is a collection of columns on languages and language which were published between 2016 and 2018 in the weekly newspaper Den Haag Centraal.

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-…

In the specialisation in Modern Languages you will explore the structure, acquisition, history and use of one or more of these five languages in depth: Chinese, English, French, German and/or Italian.

This project investigates properties of quantity expressions across languages from the perspective of how quantity is represented in the human brain.

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

The present investigation aims at exploring whether the instruction provided at secondary schools in the capital meets the requirements of Communicative Language Teaching and whether the aims of improving learners’ communicative proficiency are met.

The main goal of this project is to answer the question: how did Dutch acquire its own, distinctive linguistic characteristics?

Humans can see the world through the eyes of other humans and imagine what they know, want, and intend. This competence is known as Theory of Mind.

This project looks at how the native language influences processing mechanisms of non-native language(s) as well has how it influences brain structure and functional connectivity.

The ultimate aim of the project is to find out whether there are such things as

Like any language, the natural sign languages (henceforth: SLs) of deaf communities differ from each other in their grammars and lexicons. A growing number of studies indicates that SLs make use of the gestures of hearing speakers to build linguistic structure. This implies that variation and similarities…

How do speakers adapt to multilingual contexts?

This project explores how Muslim authorities and writers use Russian to transmit Islamic contents, and whether this leads to a specific

In this article Fisher, Klein & Codjo introduce the FOCUSdate Project and they show how the sentiment data provide unique abilities to analyze Russia's and Iran's reactions to US policies and events and NGO human rights campaigns.

This collaborative research group (CRG) facilitates the synergies of researchers engaged with African languages and documentation of texts conducted in East Africa, paying particular attention to ‘endangered archives’ and ‘endangered languages’.

On the 6th of January, Kefan Bao successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Kefan on this achievement!

The Leiden Summer School in Languages and Linguistics 2026 offers a varied program of introductory as well as more advanced courses in Anatolian, Classics, Descriptive Linguistics, Language Documentation, Eastern Christianity, Germanic, General Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Indo-European, Indology,…

How do teachers conceptualise, develop and implement an effective CLIL practice?

Knowledge and culture subproject 2:

A linguistic prehistory of the Tarim Basin in Northwest China

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

Across cultures, parents help their children master the social and linguistic codes needed in adult life. Recent research on language socialization found important cross-cultural differences, pointing out the need for more diversity for a full understanding of this process. Deaf communities form…

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…

The research programme Language Use in Past and Present brings together linguists within LUCL whose central focus is both on actual language data, including language use in earlier stages of the language, and, taking a variationist perspective, on language change in various aspects.

This research project focuses on the extended documentation and investigation of these non-Austronesian (‘Papuan’) languages.

To what extent do aspects of fluency fluctuate throughout time? And how do raters take the dynamicity of fluency into account when rating performances?

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

Comparison between babies and song-birds when they are learning a non-existent language—a study of this kind has never been tried before. But this is what Claartje Levelt, Carel ten Cate (Leiden University) and Jelle Zuidema (University of Amsterdam) are attempting.

The Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC) is concentrating increasingly on research into the role of the brain in language development. The institute has now set up the LIBC Language website that brings together all the information on this research.

Language connects us! We are here to help you! The Academic Language Centre (ATC) is the language centre of Leiden University. As the oldest university language centre in the Netherlands, we offer language courses in a wide range of languages, both for beginners and advanced students. All courses are…

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

Studying one another’s languages and cultures fosters understanding between groups of people, which leads to more equality, along with increased economic, administrative, and cultural cooperation.

On the 17th of January, Sarah Von Grebmer Zu Wolfsthurn successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Sarah on this achievement!

English Language and Linguistics at Leiden University focuses on the structure, use and history of the English language around the world, including in countries where English is spoken as a second language or as part of a mixed language.

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

Like any language, the natural sign languages of deaf communities differ from each other in their grammars and lexicons. A growing number of studies indicates that sign languages make use of the gestures of hearing speakers to build linguistic structure. This implies that variation and similarities…

This proposal aims at the construction of a comprehensive and authoritative scientific grammar for Dutch and Frisian in the form of a virtual language institute: het Taalportaal/the Language Portal.