Humanities, Centre for Linguistics

This study investigates the perception and production of emotional prosody by native and non-native listeners and speakers, i.e. Chinese and Dutch listeners and speakers, including Dutch L2 learners of Chinese.

This project, South American population history revisited: multidisciplinary perspectives on the Upper Amazon (SAPPHIRE), investigates population dynamics in western South America on the basis of traces in the geographical, genetic, archaeological, ethnological, and linguistic record.

In the new video series 'The World of Linguistics', alumni and researchers talk about their passion for their field. Professor of African Linguistics Maarten Mous explains the importance of hearing your language at school.

The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo offers Dutch language courses for Egyptian adults on a regular basis. These courses aim to provide students with language skills in Dutch, which they can use in everyday life. Therefore you will spend most of your time practicing the language in order to…

Learn the newest insights from established scholars.

Lecture, LUCL Colloquium - Series '24/'25

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 volume offers a multidisciplinary view of cutting-edge research on bilingualism in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking regions, with the aim of building a bridge between sub-fields and approaches that often find themselves isolated from one another.

The purpose of this programme is to join knowledge and insights from linguistics, literary analysis, and rhetoric, for the purpose of developing a set of methods for the stylistic investigation of any type of text in Dutch.

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.

On the 12th of May, Rita Barrera Virhuez-Eloranta successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Rita Barrera Virhuez-Eloranta on this achievement.

The Summer School in Languages and Linguistics has been a regular event on the Leiden Centre for Linguistics calendar for over 14 years.

When literature, cultural aspects, and data-driven language learning meet in a classroom.

This book presents the first comprehensive description of Tafi, one of the fourteen Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) languages, spoken by approximately 4,400 people in the southeastern part of Ghana. The description consists of thirteen chapters and is based on a corpus gathered during two fieldwork periods…

Man is nature's mind-reading champion: we are better able than any other living beings to empathise with others. This comes in part from our story-telling culture, according to Max van Duijn. PhD defence 20 April.

As a graduate of the MA Linguistics, with a specialisation in Linguistics, you will have developed a range of analytical and problem-solving skills that can be applied to many careers, in growing areas like speech technology, artificial intelligence, education, language documentation, language policy,…

Conference

The form and content of the course are determined by your answers on the intake form and, if necessary, an intake interview.

This dissertation provides a grammatical description of Ghomara Berber, a Berber language spoken in North-West Morocco by about 10.000 people. The grammar consists of a description of the phonology, the morphology and the syntax. In the appendices a number of texts and a wordlist are included. The data…

With the rise of AI, interest in computational linguistics and language models has taken flight. But machines are far from being able to go it alone. In her inaugural lecture, Professor Carole Tiberius will stress the importance of research on word combinations. ‘We know a great deal but there is a…

From Los Angeles to Tokyo, Urban Sociolinguistics is a sociolinguistic study of twelve urban settings around the world.

This thesis investigates the syntax of object marking in Sambaa and the Bantu languages in general, with particular focus on Swahili and Haya, as points of comparison.

On the 6th of November, Niels Schoubben successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Niels on this achievement!

Lexicographical description of Greek; production of Greek-Dutch dictionary

To properly understand how babies absorb a language we need to study the process from a number of different perspectives, linguist Claartje Levelt argues. She accepts her appointment as Professor of Language Acquisition on 27 March with an inaugural lecture entitled ‘Language in its infancy’.

Interested in our GTGC programme? Read more here in other languages.

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 current project aims to revive the idea that sound inventories are structured according to a small set of universal principles by applying insights from current phonological theory and by making use of modern database technologies and data assessing methodologies.

This research aims to address the connection between Sufism and modern Arabic Literature (specifically, Palestinian literature).

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…

On the 24th of October, Nurenzia Yannuar successfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Nurenzia on this achievement.

This dissertation aims to explore how university students use mobile technology for their self-directed language learning and investigate factors influencing their self-directed learning with mobile technology.