The University Executive Board has appointed Maarten Kossmann as professor for Berber Studies as of April 1, 2017. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics management team would like to congratulate Maarten with this appointment, which will strengthen LUCL’s descriptive linguistic research in general…

EU migrants receive less frequent and lower benefits and allowances than Dutch citizens. This is according to research by Leiden economists Olaf van Vliet and Eduard Suari Andreu published as part of the Social Citizenship & Migration research programme. The research is discussed in Dutch newspaper…

To be eligible for Linguistics (research) at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

The association agreement between the EU and Ukraine is highly important for peace in Ukraine, and it is therefore essential that Europe weathers these difficult times. These were the words of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on 27 November during his Europe Lecture at Leiden University.

The call for a social media ban for children is louder than ever. Professor of Children's Rights Ton Liefaard argues in ‘Trouw’ newspaper that this would be unwise. 'For children, online and offline aren't different worlds'.

What is the difference between a minister saying that something is possible or that it is not impossible ?

Pavel Durov, CEO of chat and messaging app Telegram, was arrested in France last week. The Russian tech billionaire flew into Paris by private jet and was arrested on suspicion of cybercrimes. Telegram allegedly facilitates criminal activities such as money laundering. This raises the question of how…

Studying languages enables you to unearth a lot of valuable information about humans: it reveals our history and explains cultural differences and it even illustrates the process of learning new information. The University is sharing its knowledge of and passion for languages in various new ways, including…

Here I propose to study the relationship between autonomic pupil-synchronisation and trust, at the behavioural and neural level, and examine a targeted set of possible contextual moderators.

Samir Negash, PhD candidate at Leiden University and Olaf van Vliet, Professor by special appointment Comparative Welfare State Analysis at Leiden University wrote a paper regarding the topic of immigration and the conditionality of unemployment benefits in OECD countries.

Knowledge and culture subproject 2:

Ellipsis is a frequently used sentence-shortening device. It allows us to leave out material that is evident from the (linguistic) context. Even though the elliptical material is not pronounced, elliptical sentences are not perceived as incomplete.

In this research project child language phonology is studied from the perspective of a psycholinguistic speech-production model and this model is in turn studied from the perspective of developmental phonology.

The main aim of this project is to investigate the various ways in which language categorizes possession, how these are morphosyntactically encoded across and within languages, and how this distinction should be represented in a model of the language faculty.

The project investigates epistemicity: how the knowledge of the speaker and hearer can be expressed in the grammar. This shows us how speakers organise their knowledge, and whether this is influenced by the language they speak.

Morality, mathematics, geometry, geography, music, navigation, and language are traditionally viewed as uniquely human cultural achievements and abilities. The study of their development and variation is classified as part of the humanities and social sciences. These fields have been mainly studied…

This project investigates which aspects of social media content adolescents attend to and how these relate to their credibility judgments, aiming to systematically understand their susceptibility to misinformation and inform effective educational programs that foster youth’s resilience to misinforma…

On the first day at a new job, you have sweaty palms, nerves race through your system, and you feel insecure. Now, a couple of months later these feelings have left. You know what to do in your new role and have become part of the organization. The process leading to this result is called organizational…

On the 2nd of July, Axel Palmér successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Axel on this achievement!

On the 25th of October, Suze Anja Verkade successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Suze Anja on this achievement!

Get the most out of your studies at Leiden University by taking part in our extracurricular activities.

On the 12th of December, Eleanor Dutton successfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Eleanor on this achievement.

In this region researchers at LUCL have specific expertise in studying Austronesian and Papuan languages. China is another important region where Leiden linguists conduct research.

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

This is special issue of the journal Language & Communication. The papers of this issue delve into the multifaceted realm of (non)belonging.

On the 3rd of September, Adrian Stenton successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Adrian on this achievement!

The project investigates how bilingual speakers navigate lexico-syntactic features, including grammatical gender, classifier systems, and the linear order of adjectives and nouns, across Spanish and Chinese in both unilingual and bilingual contexts.

Arabic and its Alternatives discusses the complicated relationships between language, religion and communal identities in the Middle East in the period following the First World War.

On the 24th of September, Louise S. Friis successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Louise on this achievement!

On December 13th, Maaike van Naerssen succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Maaike on this great result.

Get the most out of your studies at Leiden University by taking part in our extracurricular activities.

How do speakers adapt to multilingual contexts?

This project investigates (1) how the strategies used in expressing epistemicity differ in their interpretation and use; (2) which strategies can combine and to what effects this leads; (3) what the expression of (various aspects of) epistemicity tell us about how the languages encode the speaker’s…

On the 16th of December, Ruixue Wu successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Ruixue on this achievement!

On the 19th of February, Mariana Martins successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Mariana on this achievement!

The Australian parliament passed a law banning social media for youth under sixteen in late November. This solves nothing, argues Simone van der Hof, Professor of Law and Digital Technologies, in NRC. ‘Services should be held to the law.’

As schools in the U.S., students have to enter through security gates; schools in Belgium were forced to remain closed for several days after the attacks there; and even in the Netherlands various bomb scares have led to children having to stay at home. And yet fear of terrorism remains a difficult…

Professor Claartje Levelt, together with Paula Fikkert (Radboud University), has received an NWO Open Competition grant for research into the development of word production in toddlers.

University lecturer Lucien van Beek has been awarded a LUF Praesidium Libertatis Grant. He will use the sum of 75,000 euros to research the thinking of people in ancient and prehistoric times. To do that, he will look for unusual or striking metaphors in the earliest Indo-European languages.

Up to 50% of all children and adolescents growing up worldwide are exposed to at least one form of childhood adversity (CA), which is one of the strongest predictors for later-life psychopathology.

UnMiSSeD studies the interaction between misinformation and science in societal debates using a mixed qualitative-quantitative approach.

On the 12th of February, Cid Swanenvleugel successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Cid on this achievement!

This book contextualises case studies across a wide variety of languages and cultures, crystallising key interrelationships between linguistic standardisation and prescriptivism, and between ideas and practices. It focuses on different traditions of standardisation and prescription throughout the world…

This dissertation contains the further development of a method for linguistic-stylistic research, which provides a systematic means to interpret global impressions of a text through choices in formulation at word- and sentence level.