Linguistic Choices in the Contemporary City focuses on how individuals navigate conversation in highly diversified contexts and provides a broad overview of state of the art research in urban sociolinguistics across the globe.

Conference

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,…

Covering all seven countries on the isthmus, this volume presents the first collection of original linguistic studies on Central American Spanish varieties, which have long been neglected in Hispanic Linguistics.

Language Use, Usage Guides and Linguistic Norms will be of interest to scholars of language use in both the past and the present, as well as to anyone interested in the interplay between actual language use and prescriptive attitudes towards language.

Conference

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.

This project investigates how inhabitants of Leiden with a migratory background experience the extent to which their language and cultural background is welcomed in Dutch society and how this affects their identity, sense of belonging, and general wellbeing.

So far it has been impossible to compare large sets of syntactic constructions in large sets of languages systematically and automatically. The online availability of parallel text corpora and software tools to align, enrich, search and analyse them has the potential to make automatic massive systematic…

This project seeks to close the gap between the three main players in the field of prescriptivism: the linguists themselves, the prescriptivists (as writers of usage guides) and those who depend upon such manuals.

This project investigates the rich linguistic history of the crucial language groups in East Africa and includes a search for words that indicate earlier lost languages. These outcomes, combined with recent archaeological and genetic research, will contribute to a new understanding of East Africa’s…

There is no human society that does not employ a rich and diverse language. This course introduces you to linguistics, featuring interviews with well-known linguists and with speakers of many different languages. Join us to explore the miracles of human language!

On the 16th of February, Yunus Sulistyono successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Yunus on this achievement!

On the 16th of February 2022 Mr. Yunus Sulistyono successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

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

The policies relating to language pursued by European monarchies and states have been widely studied, but far less attention has been given to their linguistic and cultural policies in territories outside their own borders.

Indo-European is the name of the language family to which English belongs, along with many sub-families such as Germanic languages and Romance languages. In this course, you will delve into the structure and origins of these branches, the oldest languages belonging to the language family, linguistic…

This project intends to provide an integrated linguistic assessment of the hypothesised migration route of the Tocharians.

The Voices of Africa platform is ten years old and has just recently won the annual popularisation prize of the Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics (LOT). High time for a chat with Jenneke van der Wal, Maarten Mous and Nina van der Vlugt about the importance of the platform and plans for the…

In the spring semester, NIMAR offers university and university of applied sciences students two English-taught tracks worth 30 ECTS each. In both tracks, the emphasis is on enhancing language and linguistic skills, yet they also provide an in-depth introduction to Moroccan culture and society.

Fokelien Kootstra defended her thesis on 23 April 2019

This PhD project investigates the historical and sociolinguistic factors that have influenced the emergence of local sign languages in Mozambique. It examines how these factors have shaped the Deaf signing community and contributed to the development of a national sign language that incorporates borrowings…

On the 17th of December, Jin Wang successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Jin on this achievement!

Lecture, Language and the Human Past

For a brief period Leiden University was the hub of the world of linguistics. The 48th annual conference of the Societas Linguistica Europaea was held here at the start of September. Almost 600 linguists came from all corners of the world to the city of discoveries to attend this prestigious event.

On November 1st, Min Liu succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Min on this great result.

This project investigates how sign languages change and spread over time, and how this is influenced by their transmission history.

Which features characterize speakers’ voices, and how are these features determined by what a speaker is saying?

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…

This book celebrates Maarten Mous, professor of African Linguistics at Leiden University.

Human language is constantly evolving with its linguistic structure being shaped by language users at both individual and population levels. Focusing on the interplay between processes of language acquisition and communicative need in shaping human languages, this thesis introduces a novel computational…

Form and Function in Greek Grammar. Linguistic Contributions to the Study of Greek Literature is a new book, written by Albert Rijksbaron. Rijksbaron is internationally known as one of the leading scholars of the Ancient Greek language, whose work has exerted a strong and lasting influence on the scholarly…

This project combines an extensive new open database on linguistic distributions, spatial modelling and areal linguistics in order to disentangle the roles of social and environmental factors on the emergence of linguistic diversity patterns of South America.

This project aims at documenting the Haitian Creole varieties spoken by Haitian migrants in Cuba and the Dominican Republic’s Samaná Peninsula.

On the 28th of June, Laura Smorenburg successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Laura on this achievement!

The project aims at highlighting and strengthening Dutch research into the diversity of the world’s languages from a historic and a cognitive perspective.

This book presents a comprehensive description of the grammar of Logba, one of the fourteen Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) languages spoken by approximately 7,500 speakers on the South-Eastern frontier of the Ghana-Togo border. It is the outcome of fifteen months research in Logba speaking communities.

This dissertation for the first time provides a detailed description of Benchnon, a language spoken by approximately 200.000 people in Southwest Ethiopia.

This thesis investigates the grammar of Sheko, an Omotic language spoken in southwest Ethiopia.

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

This book presents the first comprehensive study of Dime, an endangered Omotic language spoken by about 5400 speakers in south-west Ethiopia. The study presents analysis of the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language as well as a sample of ten texts and an extensive word list.

A love of puzzles and the patience of a saint: these are two essential traits for linguists wishing to explore the Indo-European language family. Fortunately, Professor Michaël Peyrot possesses both. In his inaugural lecture he will take the audience on a voyage of discovery to the past.

This dissertation presents a comprehensive description of Xinka, an indigenous language from southeastern Guatemala. The description is based on a missionary grammar that is titled Arte de la lengua szinca and was written by the priest Manuel Maldonado de Matos around 1773.

This book is the first grammar on Ternate Malay, a local variety of Malay spoken on the island of Ternate, North-Moluccas, Indonesia.

Linguistic research on a unique collection of Dutch letters allowed us to gain access to the every-day language of people from various walks of life. Private letters by men, women and even children have been elaborately explored in the Letters as Loot researchprogramme, initiated and directed by prof.…