Himalayan Languages Project

The Himalayan Languages Project, headquartered in Leiden since 1993, is the largest single language documentation programme covering the Asian heartland. Holistic and comprehensive linguistic descriptions have been published or are being completed by individual members of the research team for Himalayan languages that are endangered and threatened with extinction. More...

The Origins of Language and Language Evolution

The Leiden School is a theoretical model for the evolutionary emergence and continuing evolution of human language and language-borne ideas. Meanings are understood to be self-reproducing neurological entities with the mathematical properties of non-constructible sets that are subject to natural selection. More...

Languages and Genes of the Greater Himalayan Region

Since 2001, Prof. Dr. Peter de Knijff of the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) and Prof. Dr. George van Driem of the Himalayan Languages Project have been collaborating with colleagues at home and abroad on reconstructing Asian population prehistory. More...