The alignment of the James Webb Space Telescope is complete. The space observatory is able to capture sharp, well-directed images with each of its four powerful scientific instruments on board. The MIRI instrument, on which Professor of Molecular Astrophysics Ewine van Dishoeck also worked, was the…

This project launches a research program into the theoretical status and the terminological basis of evidentiality systems.

This dissertation provides a novel perspective on the interaction between quantifier scope and ellipsis. It presents a detailed investigation of the scopal interaction between English negative indefinites, modals, and quantified phrases in ellipsis. One of the crucial observations is that a negative…

Stylianos Irakleous defended his thesis on 6 February 2020

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.

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.

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 project employs a systematic experimental approach to examine the interaction of these two hitherto independent lines of research (tone sandhi and focus realization) in six dialects of Chinese, which lie on a continuum between dialects with dense tonal distributions and sparser distributions. In…

One of the ECSL’s most successful activities is the ESA/ECSL Summer Course on Space Law and Policy, which is open to students in any stage of their study and a number of young professionals already working in the space industry and space-related sectors. The course is now in its 32nd year and boasts…

The application window for the 26th ECSL Summer Course on Space Law and Policy is now open. The deadline for applicants to send their applications to you is 30 June 2017.

In this research, for the first time a detailed description as well as systematic and comparative analysis of the final particle system in Chinese are provided.

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.

The Hague Diplomacy Podcast aims at bringing the themes of the journal's research off the page, and onto the discussion table. Each episode will feature a guest who will share their insights and personal experience within their practice of or research on diplomacy. Available via SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts…

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

An artwork by Guy Livingston has been chosen to launch into space and be exhibited on the International Space Station.

Maarten Mous, Professor of African Linguistics at Leiden University, looks back on the 50th edition of the Colloquium of African Languages and Linguistics (CALL) and explains why this birthday was a celebration like no other.

NASA is offering to buy lunar samples collected by companies for a token sum primarily to set a precedent for space resource rights on the moon. However, there is not international consensus on the U.S. position on the rights to extracted resources.

Maarten Mous, Professor of African Linguistics at Leiden University, looks back on the 50th edition of the Colloquium of African Languages and Linguistics (CALL) and explains why this birthday was a celebration like no other.

This dissertation investigates whether and how gradability is manifested in the nominal domain, as well as the implications this could have for theories of the representation of gradability.

On the 19th of November, Tingting Zheng successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Tingting on this achievement!

Bernhard Brandl, the new Leiden Professor of Infrared Astronomy, is developing instruments for the world’s largest telescopes. These telescopes can be used to observe objects in space that are more than 13 billion years old. Brandl will deliver his inaugural lecture on 26 September.

Much of the literature on space diplomacy houses a Western precedent through the use of mainstream ideas of IR to emphasise space...

Tonal bilinguals of two closely related Chinese dialects are amazing people. They handle two tonal systems in their mind; their two vocabularies are from closely related dialects, and they write translation equivalents with common Chinese characters. Their unique language situation makes their mind…

After having been cancelled in 2020, this year the Summer School in Languages and Linguistics is going online. From 12 – 23 July, language and linguistics enthusiasts from all over the world can once again learn about a variety of rare languages and linguistics topics. Director Sasha Lubotsky tells…

Commercial parties offering space travel, space waste, claiming the moon, potentially exploiting resources ... It’s going to get busy in space in the coming years. But there are no clear agreements about this. Tanja Masson-Zwaan, Assistant Professor of Space Law, talked about the topic in Spraakmakers…

This dissertation attempts to describe the linguistic history of Hittite on the basis of a systematic etymological treatment of its entire inherited lexicon, precisely analyzing the phonological and morphological developments.

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.

Lecture

This project focuses on a striking parallelism between two macro-groups of languages: southern Italian dialects and the so-called split-ergative languages, like Basque, Georgian, Dyirbal, Hindi/Urdu.

During the second episode of this Leiden Law podcast, hosts Juli Wentholt and Ishana Badhai will talk with Tanja Masson-Zwaan about the latest developments in Space Law.