Making sense of the world around us depends on the fundamental ability to parse the world into distinct objects and keep track of them. This process is defined as object individuation. Research indicates that it is not always easy for infants.

Fred Janssen is curious about how best to teach students and students to gain a good understanding of complex ‘swamp situations’. This is the subject of his inaugural lecture as Professor of Science Education at the ICLON and the Faculty of Science. Inaugural address 19 June 2017.

Experience, Narrative, and Criticism in Ancient Greece pursues a new approach to ancient Greek narrative beyond the taxonomies of structuralist narratologies.

For decades, linguists have racked their brains over the question of precisely how the syntax of various languages is different. PhD candidate Martin Kroon has developed a computer system that brings us closer to finding an answer. His PhD defence is on 10 November.

Brain research and statistics are advancing our understanding of language and language acquisition. Linguists are still essential, however, says Professor of Dutch Linguistics Sjef Barbiers. Inaugural lecture on 8 December.

Migration is not only reflected in DNA, but also in language. By tracing changes in language, we learn more about the lifestyle of the people that speak it. University lecturer Tijmen Pronk (40) conducts linguistic research into (pre)historical migration.

This dissertation assesses the influence of British Celtic on the phonological development of English during and shortly after the Anglo-Saxon settlement period, ca. AD 450-700.

This dissertation focuses on the overt marking of φ features encoded on perfective active auxiliaries in a group of Southern Italian dialects.

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.

Within the Linguistics specialisation, you can choose one of the suggested thematic routes. Depending on the theme of your choice, the programme prepares you for a career in various fields, such as speech technology, artificial intelligence, education, language documentation and language policy.

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 provides a description of the phonology and morphology of Mambay, an Adamawa (Niger-Congo) language spoken by 15,000 people in Chad and Cameroon.

Syntacticians study how words combine into larger units (phrases and sentences) in human languages and how the combinatorial possibilities determine word order and grammatical relations between parts of a sentence.

This dissertation focuses on the systematic vowel alternations displayed by the Proto-Germanic n-stems. The fact is, that many of these nouns now appear to have preserved the ablaut system of the Indo-European proto-language spoken some five millennia ago. In this respect, the n-stems are truly comparable…

This grammar provides a description of Sunwar, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in eastern Nepal, based on data collected during twelve months of field work.

This dissertation contains a detailed description of the Carib language, including the most extensive dictionary of the language to date. This knowledge is based on work from earlier sources and field work which was carried out by the author over a ten-year period, particularly in Galibi, a Carib village…

Workshop

The Laiseang archiving project ensures the preservation of unique records of languages in the region which have been gathered by more than two dozen linguists at, and in collaboration with Dutch universities over the last 40 years.

This dissertation provides a description of Makonde, a Bantu language spoken in Tanzania.

This book presents an in-depth grammatical description of Kumzari, a mixed language spoken in remote villages on the Musandam Peninsula in northern Oman.

The Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition is a network focusing on science valorisation and outreach, stimulating interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge and expertise on topics related to brain and cognition. Its research members come from a broad and diverse spectrum of specialized academic fields…

On 4 and 5 November 2021 an ICOG-workshop will be held on the cognitive turn in history. It is possible to attend this workshop online. The participants of the workshop are cultural and intellectual historians of the pre-modern periods and/or of the historiography of academia from a long-term perspective,…

This dissertation is the first comprehensive description of Makalero, a language spoken by approximately 6,500 speakers in the Iliomar subdistrict, in the south-east of the Republic of East Timor. While previous sources considered it to be a dialect of the larger language Makasae, the present study,…

In this study Lilie Roosman describes the effects of prominence and boundary marking on the temporal and melodic structures of two regional languages of Indonesia, viz. Toba Batak, a stress language, and her native language Betawi Malay, a non-stress language.

This grammar presents an in-depth linguistic description of one Papuan Malay variety, based on fifteen hours of recordings of spontaneous narratives and conversations between Papuan Malay speakers.

More than half of Europeans speak two or more languages. Linguist Lisa Cheng investigates the various forms of multilingualism in Europe from a linguistic, cognitive and sociological perspective. She looks for instance at the way in which minority languages influence the standard language of a country,…

On Saturday 16 April, secondary school pupils will once again have a chance to sink their teeth into the hardest language-related questions during the final of the Linguistics Olympiad. Professor Sasha Lubotsky and PhD student Cid Swanenvleugel are both former Olympiad winners. Now they are involved…

With an MSc degree in Media Technology you will be prepared for a career involving creative and critical thinking. Our alumni have a broad choice of career prospects: they hold positions ranging from academic researcher to creative entrepreneur.

Master’s student of Linguistics Marten van der Meulen helped organise the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Miracles of Human Language, which ran from 30 March until 11 May 2015. What was it like for a student to organise an MOOC? And what did he learn from it?

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…

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.

In September 2019, Manon Mulckhuyse will start a position as assistant professor in the Cognitive Psychology Unit.

This dissertation provides an overview of the phonological developments of the Qinghai-Gansu languages, comparing them to the reconstructed ancestral language.

Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker will retire on 8 February. If there’s one theme running through his career, it’s the links between the University and society. In this series of pre-retirement discussions, Stolker will talk one last time to people from within and without the University. In this first…

Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) is a reputable institute in the field of linguistics, offering excellent research and education opportunities covering a broad range of languages of the world.