The Leiden School
Encyclopedia
The Leiden school is a school of thought in linguistics
that models languages as meme
s or benign neurological parasites,http://www.semioticon.com/virtuals/imitation/van_driem_paper.pdf and tries to use rigorous mathematical tools borrowed by analogy from biological evolution to model the origin and spread of language in general and specific languages in particular. It is based at the University of Leiden, and its chief proponents are George van Driem
, Frederik Kortlandt
, and Jeroen Wiedenhof
. The Leiden School has a significant overlap in personnel with the Himalayan Languages Project
.
The Leiden school of linguistics should not be confused with the current research institute of linguistics at Leiden University, the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, LUCL (http://www.lucl.nl cf. also the article on structural anthropology, with a short piece on The Leiden School, as an anthropological approach very much resembling – while being a forebear – of the French structural anthropology of Cl. Levi-Strauss).
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
that models languages as meme
Meme
A meme is "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena...
s or benign neurological parasites,http://www.semioticon.com/virtuals/imitation/van_driem_paper.pdf and tries to use rigorous mathematical tools borrowed by analogy from biological evolution to model the origin and spread of language in general and specific languages in particular. It is based at the University of Leiden, and its chief proponents are George van Driem
George van Driem
George van Driem, born 1957, is a linguist at , where he holds the chair of Historical Linguistics and directs the .-Background:George van Driem has conducted field research in the Himalayas since 1983...
, Frederik Kortlandt
Frederik Kortlandt
Frederik Herman Henri Kortlandt is a professor of descriptive and comparative linguistics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is an expert on Baltic and Slavic languages, the Indo-European languages in general, and Proto-Indo-European, though he has also published studies of languages in...
, and Jeroen Wiedenhof
Jeroen Wiedenhof
Jeroen Maarten Wiedenhof is a senior lecturer at the Department of Chinese Studies at the University of Leiden, and an expert on Sino-Tibetan languages. He is a leading member of both the Himalayan Languages Project and the Leiden School of linguistic theory.-External links:*...
. The Leiden School has a significant overlap in personnel with the Himalayan Languages Project
Himalayan Languages Project
The Himalayan Languages Project, launched in 1993, is a research collective based at Leiden University and comprising much of the world's authoritative research on the lesser-known and endangered languages of the Himalayas, in Nepal, China, Bhutan, and India. Its members regularly spend months or...
.
The Leiden school of linguistics should not be confused with the current research institute of linguistics at Leiden University, the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, LUCL (http://www.lucl.nl cf. also the article on structural anthropology, with a short piece on The Leiden School, as an anthropological approach very much resembling – while being a forebear – of the French structural anthropology of Cl. Levi-Strauss).