Starting September 1st, philosopher Douglas Berger will be professor of Comparative Philosophy at the Leiden Institute for Philosophy. His appointment marks a new direction for research and education in philosophy at Leiden University.

This study proposes a theory for the encoding of specificity and definiteness in the Chinese nominal based on Cantonese, Mandarin and Wenzhou data.

The largest international conference on English historical linguistics is coming to Leiden. From 7 June to 11 June 2021, the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) organises the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL-21). Due to Covid measures, the conference takes…

Language can be a time machine: we can learn from ancient texts how our ancestors interacted with the world around them. But can language also teach us something about people whose language has been lost? PhD candidate Anthony Jakob investigated whether the languages of prehistoric populations left…

In this dissertation, a corpus of 595 seventeenth-century letters (mainly private ones) written between 1664 and 1672 is examined from a sociolinguistic perspective.

This project aims at describing the Khoisan languages !Ora (Korana/Griqua) and !Ui of South Africa.

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…

CompaRe’s third virtual PhD roundtable was held on 29 March 2023. In attendance were the head of the centre, staff and PhD candidates. The roundtable focused on brainstorming a wide range of questions around the research process.

This project aims to revisit the ways in which religious minorities in the Middle East participated in, contributed to, and opposed the Arab nationalism of the post-war years, when the British and French ruled the region via the Mandates. Research question: How did religious minorities in the Middle…

Does the political context (e.g., democracy vs. authoritarianism) influence what makes people perceive authorities as legitimate?

On 1 December 2020, Bernadette Muscat defended her thesis 'Insolvency Close-out Netting: A comparative study of English, French and US laws in a global perspective'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. M. Haentjens and Prof. B. Wessels.

Dr. Janet Grijzenhout (Universität Konstanz) was appointed Professor English Linguistics and will be working at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL).

Kyra van der Moezel defended her thesis on 7 September 2016.

Een onderzoek naar de formulering, structuur, rechtshistorische aard en sociale en religieuze achtergronden van Laat-Egyptische (demotische) tempeleden, aangevuld met 70 ongepubliceerde teksten.

This 862-page monograph is a grammar of Thangmi, an endangered Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the districts of Dolakha and Sindhupalcok in central-eastern Nepal.

Grammatical gender is famously the most puzzling of the grammatical categories. We have a solid typology of gender systems, yet exciting and unexpected patterns keep turning up which defy easy classification and straightforward analysis. Some of these question, stretch or threaten to cross the outer…

A synchronic description of the endangered Slovene dialect spoken in the Gailtal valley in Carinthia, Austria.

Through a range of case studies spanning the post-Cold War period in Iraq, Moldova and Serbia, this book studies asymmetric conflicts where warring sides exhibit vast power differentials.

This study looks at the diverse phonological systems found within Central Chadic, and reconstructs the phonological system of their ancestor language.

ChatGPT, translation machines and bots: for Carole Tiberius, they are a piece of cake. On 1 January, she was appointed professor of Computational Linguistics. 'There ae two elements to the field: computer science and linguistics.'

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.

On 1 August, Egbert Fortuin has been appointed Professor of Russian Language and Linguistics. After a five-year term as vice-dean of the Faculty Board, he is eager to fully devote himself to the study programme. His appointment can therefore be summarised in three words: 'I am back'.

The current study focuses on Walpole’s social network and the language as contained in the letters of the network members.

This doctoral thesis elaborates Langacker’s reference-point model by applying it to lexical semantics.

The goal of the MODOMA-project is to create a computer model of language acquisition.

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

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

This dissertation sheds light on politics, education and linguistic identity by studying the case of the College of Jerusalem, founded by the Brothers of the Christian Schools.

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-…

To what extent are there differences between countries in and outside the European Union and the Schengen area in the level of crimmigration, the merger between migration control and crime control, and to what extent can these differences be explained by the way in which state and non-state actors in…

This study presents the first systematic investigation and detailed theoretical analysis of the temporal interpretations of sentences with bare (aspectually unmarked) predicates in Mandarin.

This dissertation explores the history of the language of a manuscript known as Tönnies Fonne's Russian-German Phrasebook (Pskov 1607).

This dissertation is a comprehensive description of the Jiăomùzú dialects. These dialects belong to the Tibetan-Birmese language of the rGyalrong spoken in the province Sìchuā, China.

This dissertation provides a systematic description of English and Afrikaans verbal pseudo-coordination and a formal analysis couched in the Minimalist program.

This dissertation provides a thorough review of the words belonging to the oldest layer of Germanic loanwords in Proto-Slavic and answers the question of how these words were adapted to the Proto-Slavic accentual system.

Japanese was not always the language spoken in Japan. Researchers link the arrival of the language in Japan with the migration of farmers around 400 BC. Linguist Elisabeth de Boer has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant to carry out research on the further spread of the language in Japan.

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.

Professor of Sociohistorical Linguistics Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade was appointed Knight in the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands on 11 September in her home city of The Hague. Deputy Mayor Bert van Alphen presented her with the decoration.

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…

Dutch universities involved in lingusitics research and teaching have been asked through the VSNU to provide financial guarantees for the transition of linguistics research to open access. The universities, including Leiden, have agreed.

This dissertation investigates the grammar of Makhuwa-Enahara, a Bantu language spoken in the north of Mozambique. The information structure is an influential factor in this language, determining the word order and the use of special conjugations known as conjoint and disjoint verb forms.

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…