How does the human mind work when it comes to language? Why are some speeches totally persuasive, and others less so? How do children acquire language so effortlessly? How do languages develop over the course of time? How many different speech sounds can humans make? During your BA in Linguistics you…

This dissertation the role of the English dissenting minister Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) as a grammarian is studied.

Our language is adapted to the context in which we humans communicate. But computers ‘think’ differently. What is the optimal form of a language for human-machine communication? Tessa Verhoef is trying to find the answer.

Knowledge and culture subproject 4:

The Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC) is concentrating increasingly on research into the role of the brain in language development. The institute has now set up the LIBC Language website that brings together all the information on this research.

On the 29th of June, Martin Kohlberger successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Martin on this achievement!

On December 6th, Bob Schoemaker succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Bob on this great result.

On 23 January 2020, Paula Kemp defended her thesis 'Enforced performance of commercial sales contracts in the Netherlands, Singapore and China'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. H.B. Krans and Prof. M.H. Wissink (RU Groningen).

On the 16th of June, Ndokobai Dadak successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Ndokobai on this achievement!

Linguist Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade retired in July, but is pressing on regardless with her languages in The Hague project. An online tour of her Hague Proverbs launched recently and Tieken also has academic publications in the pipeline.

A new challenge for Felix Ameka. The senior lecturer at the Centre for Linguistics has been appointed professor by special appointment of Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Diversity in the World. ‘I am looking forward to promoting ethnolinguistic diversity and vitality.’

More than a thousand 17th- and 18th-century Dutch letters from seized ships are now available online. The letters are a gold mine for researchers wanting to study the everyday language used by men and women during this period.

The Leiden University Center for Linguistics (LUCL) will organise Going Romance 2019 on November 28-29, 2019.

Speech Prosody 2024 includes seven special sessions. When making a submission, authors are asked to indicate whether they want their paper to be considered for a special session. You can find descriptions of each below.

From 17 to 19 September, the University of Granada organized the 27th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (SELIM).

During the past year online meetings and lectures have become a firm feature of university life. One of the highlights of the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics’ online activities has been the online seminar series ‘Language policy and practices in the Global North and South’ organised by guest…

A century ago, the French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure proposed that the relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning is fundamentally arbitrary. In a new study, a team of researchers from European and American research institutions, including Søren Wichmann from Leiden University Centre…

Professor Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade has been awarded a fellowship at Clare College at the University of Cambridge from February to August 2011. She will use the opportunity to pursue her research on the relationship between the history of grammar writing and actual usage.

Researcher Max van Duijn and PhD student Bram van Dijk apply language models to stories told by children to investigate empathy. For this research, they received the Best Paper Award at the Computational Natural Language Learning Conference in Singapore.

The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) aims to demonstrate its relevance to society by means of high-quality research, excellent education and various outreach activities. A few highlights:

Vocal learning is a trait shared by songbirds and humans. It is also a trait that is restricted by the brain rather than by a species' vocal apparatus. In this dissertation, functional MRI is employed in both species in order to explore potential common neural mechanisms underlying the ability to develop…

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded Vidi grants to 14 Leiden researchers. This grant of a maximum of 850,000 euros will enable them to start a new research group and develop their own line of research over the next five years.

Everything you need to know about the minor French and the French-speaking world in a nutshell.

Lecture, This Time For Africa! series

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On 4 June 2018, students of the Forensic Speech Science master’s course visited the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) in The Hague. They were presented with practical examples, such as speech research with voice recordings of suspects. Forensic phonetics is a young, rapidly developing discipline…

Study information

Study information

Do you have any questions about the Industrial Ecology master’s programme? Please contact us! It is also possible to schedule a call with our study advisors or one of our students. Moreover, we have online Walk-In hours every third Friday of the month.

Lecture

'Psychologists think I’m a linguist but linguists think I’m a psychologist,' says cognitive neuroscientist Xiaochen Zheng. With the Veni grant she will be able to bring these two fields of research closer together. Read her answers to five questions.

Prof. Dr. Willem Adelaar has been elected as Honorary member of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA)

Professor Sjef Barbiers is leaving his job as scientific director of LUCL for the position of scientific director of the Institute for the Dutch Language (INT) from 1 September.