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.

Chinese Linguistics at Leiden University offers you an excellent opportunity to benefit from our long-standing expertise in Chinese linguistics

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!

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.

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.

This PhD project investigates specific types of allusions used by Russian native speakers, namely references to classical Russian literature. The research includes the analysis of 1) how native speakers use allusions, 2) what type of discourse allusions are frequently used, and 3) how we can implement…

This project examines how speakers store and process regular pitch variation.

Onlangs verscheen het boek ‘Afgrond zonder vangnet’ van Yra van Dijk, hoogleraar Moderne Nederlandse Literatuur. In haar boek analyseert ze verschillende thema's in het werk van Arnon Grunberg.

This edited book presents case-studies and reflections on the role of languages and their analytic study in development practices across four regions: Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific.

A thorough description of the relationships among languages and their social environment in a given context, reflecting an ecological perspective, involves attention to the agency of local actors, and the policies, discourse, and ideologies that surround them.

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.

In this project we study the properties of statistical- and rule-learning mechanisms in relation to the acquisition and evolution of language. We ask to what extent these mechanisms are unique to humans - or to human language - by comparing the acquisition of vocal structure in two species: humans (infants)…

It is our goal to deliver a convenient, enjoyable, learning experience that goes beyond the basics. All of the apps are an initiative of the HANDS! Lab for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies at Leiden University, as part of the Language Socialization in Deaf Families project funded by the Leiden University…

Bringing together scholars from a broad range of theoretical perspectives, The Language of Argumentation offers a unique overview of research at the crossroads of linguistics and theories of argumentation.

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…

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

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)?

From ca. 1540 to 1600, thousands fled the war-stricken Southern Low Countries to the British Isles, Germany, and the Northern Low Countries. Research on this displacement crisis, central to the formation of the Netherlands and Belgium, reflects 21st-century debates on migration and language: language…

In the master’s programme in Dutch Language, Culture and Society at Leiden University you will study the language and culture of the Netherlands from the Dutch Golden Age – the time of Rembrandt and Vondel – until today’s dynamic and muliticultural society.

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’.

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.

The main question of this research project concerns the extent to which light verbs in West Germanic languages participate in processes of language change.

Een uitbreiding van de NIMAR collectie van de Universitaire bibliotheken Leiden.

Promotor: C.J. ten Cate

Knowledge and culture subproject 1:

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.

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.

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

A linguistic prehistory of the Tarim Basin in Northwest China

Alternative perspectives and sources of colonial literature haven’t received much attention before now. School books have long ignored the violence that accompanies colonialsm. How can we paint an honest picture?

Stylianos Irakleous defended his thesis on 6 February 2020

A fascinating description of a global language, A Grammar of Mandarin by Jeroen Wiedenhof combines broad perspectives with illuminating depth.

The present study comprises a classification and analysis of the syntax of the non-verbal clause in Qumran Hebrew, i.e. the linguistic variety (or varieties) found in the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls. The corpus consists of the non-biblical texts written in Hebrew; biblical texts and texts written in…

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

Open access, online talks on African Sign Language Studies, in International sign and English

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.

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

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-…