This study investigates the syntax and distribution of the two elliptical phenomena Gapping and Fragments, as well as the movements involved in ellipsis contexts in general.

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.

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…

Lecture

On Friday 15 March, more than 750 students from the Netherlands and abroad visited the Master’s Open Day at the Faculty of Humanities to explore their options.

Leiden University has a long tradition in the collaboration with Indonesia.

Lecture, Histories Connected: Work-in-Progress

This study explores the role of linguistic data in the reconstruction of Dolgan (pre)history by analyzing contact-induced changes and using them to infer information about the nature of the contact settings in which they occurred.

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

The Leiden Summerschool in Languages and Linguistics, including courses in Papyrology, is now open. BA/MA/PhD students are welcome to attend.

The Academic Language Centre is organising an introduction to Ukrainian with the Russian Studies/Russian and Eurasian Studies programmes. This six-part course is meant primarily for people who are in contact with refugees from Ukraine.

Wim Timmermans, a former lecturer at Leiden Law School, has been appointed Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau. He was awarded this prestigious honour, among other things, for his outstanding contributions in the field of Russian and East European law.

The key subject of Cities, Migration and Global Interdependence is Inequality at local, national and global levels.

The aim of this research was to establish if Ebeling's semiotactic theory and method of semiotactic analysis, as described in his works Syntax and Semantics (1978), Een Inleiding tot de Syntaxis (1994) and Semiotaxis, over Theoretische en Nederlandse Syntaxis (2006), could be applied to Modern Japanese…

Afro-American slaves in the 19th century did not always flee to the north of the United States, according to historical research. Most of the slaves who fled remained in the southern states and posed as free coloured people. This is the conclusion that Professor Damian Pargas from Leiden University…

In September 2013 I moved to Leiden from the UK to take up the position of Assistant Professor covering politics and international relations on the BA Russian Studies and International Studies programmes and the MA Russian and Eurasian Studies.

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.

This thesis investigates the processing of words written in Japanese kanji and Chinese hànzì, i.e. logographic scripts.

This is a study of Plateau Shimakonde, a sub-dialect of the Makonde language which is spoken on the Makonde Plateau in northern Mozambique.

This thesis presents a thorough survey of the central aspects of the phonology of Shaoxing Chinese from a synchronic perspective and on the basis of recent theoretical phonological developments, with the secondary goal of casting some light on current issues in Modern Chinese (Mandarin).

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…

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.

Making extensive use of primary source materials this study contributes to existing scholarship in the field of eighteenth-century grammars and grammarians by providing an in-depth study of Ash’s Grammatical Institutes and its influence on other popular grammars for children.

In the book 'Slave in a Palanquin: Colonial Servitude and Resistance in Sri Lanka' Nira Wickramasinghe, professor of Modern South Asian Studies, uncovers the traces of slavery in the history and memory of the Indian Ocean world. She was interviewed about the book in the New Books in South East Asian…

This study examines the mutual intelligibility between all 225 pairs of 15 Chinese dialects, in two main branches, i.e., six Mandarin dialects and nine non-Mandarin (Southern) dialects.

As a practice in which human beings were held captive for an indefinite period of time, coerced into extremely dependent and exploitative power relationships, denied rights (including rights over their labor, lives, and bodies), often vulnerable to forced relocation by various means, and forced to labor…

Historians recently started preliminary research on Leiden University’s role in colonialism and historical slavery. Our knowledge about this is too limited and fragmented. They are looking with fresh eyes at Leiden’s archives and collections. An interview with historians Alicia Schrikker and Ligia G…

Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) is an independent institute within the Leiden University Humanities Faculty. A Management Team, consisting of an Academic/Scientific Director, a Director of Education and an Institute Manager, is responsible for the overall running of the institute. This…

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.

On the 23rd of January, Anastasiia Ionova successfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Anastasiia on this achievement.

PhD defence

In this dissertation, the types of context Dutch speakers need to interpret the poly-interpretable word ergens ‘somewhere/anywhere’ are studied.

Descriptions of different languages help us understand what speakers of different languages share worldwide. At the same time, having descriptions of languages available can also change local education and open our eyes to cultural and linguistic diversity. But what if a language has not yet been (fully)…

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

This dissertation provides a formal description of the relationship between diatopic/diachronic micro-variation and phonologization through analysis of the phonetic/phonological properties of unstressed vowel reduction and vowel insertion in two Northern Italian dialects.

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

The 10th edition of the World Congress of African Linguists (WOCAL), hosted by Leiden University, will be held online from 7 – 12 June. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) researchers give us an insight into how important and special this event actually is.

The 10th edition of the World Congress of African Linguists (WOCAL), hosted by Leiden University, will be held online from 7 – 12 June. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) researchers give us an insight into how important and special this event actually is.

The Humanities Faculty Teaching Award has been won by Olja Karmanova. The Russian lecturer was presented with the award during the opening of the faculty year.

When alumnus Jonathan Katzman started his master's programme in Russian and Eurasian Studies, he didn't foresee how useful those skills would be in the near future. Now, he manages a refugee centre for Ukrainians who have fled their war-torn country.

This dissertation provides a comprehensive overview of the grammar of Bantawa, a Kiranti (Rai) language spoken in Eastern Nepal.

Words originally intended to indicate space, such as ‘out’, are also regularly used to indicate cause and effect. Why does this happen? And how does it work in other languages? PhD candidate Camil Staps decided to find out.

Lecture, Global Histories of Knowledge Seminar

The projects of nine researchers at Leiden University have received funding through the new NWO Science Diplomacy Fund. The Fund is for scientific activities that will improve relations between the Netherlands and other countries.

University lecturer Alex Reuneker has won the Frans van Eemeren Prize for his paper 'Assessing classification reliability of conditionals in discourse'.