Rik van Gijn
Associate professor
- Name
- Dr. E. van Gijn
- Telephone
- +31 71 527 2413
- e.van.gijn@hum.leidenuniv.nl
- ORCID iD
- 0000-0001-9911-2907
Rik van Gijn is an associate professor at the Centre for Linguistics. His interests focus on the indigenous languages of (western) South America, and in particular on the question of the historical development of the stunning linguistic diversity there. Currently he focuses on these questions in the context of his ERC-Consolidator project South American Population History Revisited (SAPPHIRE). His teaching experience includes the languages of South America, typology, morphology, field linguistics, descriptive linguistics, and contact linguistics.
Fields of interest
- South American Indigenous languages
- Areal typology
- Linguistic areas
- Fieldwork
- Language description
- Multi-disciplinary research
- Language endangerment and vitality
- Linguistic diversity
Grants and awards
- LOT-Grotevragenprijs, with E. van Lier, A. Backus, N. de Jong, K. Rybka, J. Smit, J. Verhagen, K. Walker, C. Welie (2023)
- Teaching innovation grants ECOLE and Faculty of Humanities (2022)
- ERC consolidator grant SAPPHIRE (2019)
- Seed money grant Leading House for the Latin American region St. Gallen (CH) (2018)
- NIAS fellowship (2011)
- VENI grant NWO (2008)
- DoBeS documentation grant (2006)
Curriculum Vitae
| 2023-present | Senior lecturer Leiden University |
| 2019-2023 | University lecturer Leiden University |
| 2012-2019 | Post-doctoral researcher University of Zurich |
| 2009-2021 | Post-doctoral researcher Radboud University Nijmegen |
| 2006-2011 | Post-doctoral researcher Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics Nijmegen |
| 2001-2006 | PhD researcher Radboud University Nijmegen |
Key publications
- Rik van Gijn, Hanna Ruch, Max Wahlström & Anja Hasse (eds.). 2023. Language contact: bridging the gap between individual interactions and areal patterns. Leipzig/Berlin: Language Science Press.
- Van Gijn, Rik, Sietze Norder, Leonardo Arias Alvis, Nicholas Q. Emlen, Mattheus Azevedo, Allison Caine, Saskia Dunn, Austin Howard, Nora Julmi, Olga Krasnoukhova & Jurriaan Wiegertjes. 2022, The social life of isolates (and small language families): the case of the Northwest Amazon. Interface Focus 13.
- Arias Alvis, Leonardo, Nicholas Q. Emlen, Sietze Norder, Nora Julmi, Magdalena Lemus-Serrano, Thiago Chacon, Jurriaan Wiegertjes, Austin Howard, Matheus Azevedo, Saskia Dunn & Rik van Gijn. submitted. Interpreting mismatches between linguistic and genetic patterns among speakers of Tanimuka (Eastern Tukanoan) and Yukuna (Arawakan). Interface Focus 13.
- Norder, Sietze, Laura Becker, Hedvig Skirgaard, Leonardo Arias Alvis, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, Harald Hammarström & Rik van Gijn. 2022. Glottospace: R package for language mapping and spatial analysis of linguistic and cultural data. Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) 7(7): 4303.
- Ranacher, Peter, Nico Neureiter, Rik van Gijn, Barbara Sonnenhauser, Anastasia Escher, Robert Weibel, Pieter Muysken & Balthasar Bickel. 2021. Contact-tracing in cultural evolution: a Bayesian mixture model to detect geographic areas of language contact. Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
- Van Gijn, Rik and Jeremy Hammond (eds.) 2016. Switch reference 2.0. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Van Gijn, Rik, Jeremy Hammond, Dejan Matic, Saskia van Putten and Ana Vilacy Galucio (eds.) 2014. Information structure and reference tracking in complex sentences.
- Van Gijn, Rik, Katharina Haude and Pieter Muysken (eds.).
- Van Gijn, Rik and Fernando Zúñiga. 2014. Word and the Americanist perspective. Morphology 24(3): 135-160.
- 2011. Subordination in native South American languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins [Typological Studies in Language 97].
Associate professor
- Faculty of Humanities
- Leiden Univ Centre for Linguistics
- LUCL TCIA
- Epps P., Gijn R. van & Emlen N. (2025), South America. In: Arkadiev P. & Rainer F. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Historical Morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Gijn R. van, Arias L. & Gregorio de Souza J. (2025), Archaeolinguistics of language families and contact areas of Amazonia. In: Robbeets M. & Hudson M. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of archaeology and language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Gijn E. van (2024), Contact-induced diffusion of applicatives in northwestern Amazonia?. In: Zúñiga F. & Creissels D. (Eds.), Applicative constructions in the world’s languages: bridging the gap between individual interactions and areal pattern. Comparative Handbooks of Linguistics no. 7. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. 307-346.
- Blum F., Englisch J., Hermida-Rodriguez A., Gijn E. van & List J.M. (2024), Resource acquisition for understudied languages: extracting wordlists from dictionaries for computer-assisted language comparison. Melero M., Sakti S. & Sori C. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd annual meeting of the special interest group on under-resourced languages @ LREC-COLING 2024. The 3rd Annual Meeting of the ELRA-ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-resourced Languages 21 May 2024 - 22 May 2024. Turin: Language Resources Association (ELRA). 300-306.
- Gijn E. van (2024), Syntactic structures in the languages of the Central Andes. In: Urban M. (Ed.), Oxford guide to the languages of the Central Andes. Oxford Guides to the World's Languages no. Oxford Guides to the World's Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Emlen N., Gijn R. van & Norder S. (2023), The Andean-Amazonian interface: Sociolinguistic relations and areal-typological patterns. In: Urban M. (Ed.), Oxford Guide to the Languages of the Central Andes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Gijn E. van, Ruch H., Wahlström M. & Hasse A (2023), Language contact: bridging the gap between individual interactions and areal patterns. Language Variation no. 8. Berlin: Language Science Press.
- Gijn E. van & Wahlstrom M. (2023), Linguistic areas. In: Gijn E. van, Ruch H., Wahlström M. & Hasse A. (Eds.), Language contact: bridging the gap between individual interactions and areal pattern. Berlin: Language Science Press. 179-219.
- Lier E. van, Backus A., Jong N. de, Gijn E. van, Konrad R., Smit J., Verhagen J., Walker K. & Welie C. (2023), The Netherlands Urban Field Station: how language diversity promotes equality of opportunity, Linguistics in the Netherlands 40(1): 293-300.
- Gijn E. van, Norder S., Arias Alvis L., Emlen N.Q., Azevedo M.C.B.C., Caine A., Dunn S.E., Howard A.H., Julmi N.P., Krasnoukhova O., Stoneking M. & Wiegertjes J.S. (2023), The social lives of isolates (and small language families): the case of the Northwest Amazon, Interface Focus 13(1): 1-22.
- Arias Alvis L., Emlen N.Q., Norder S., Julmi N.P., Lemus S.M., Chacon T., Wiegertjes J.S., Howard A.H., Azevedo M.C.B.C., Caine A., Dunn S.E., Stoneking M. & Gijn R. van (2023), Interpreting mismatches between linguistic and genetic patterns among speakers of Tanimuka (Eastern Tukanoan) and Yukuna (Arawakan), Interface Focus 13(1): 20220056.
- Emlen N.Q., Arias Alvis L. & Gijn E. van (2023), Multidisciplinary approaches to the Amazonian past: introduction to the theme issue, Interface Focus 13(1): 20220068.
- Gijn E. van, Case J.T., Bruil M., Claassen S.A., Grzech K. & Julmi N.P. (2023), Lexically driven patterns of contact in alignment systems of languages of the northern Upper Amazon, Open Linguistics 9(1): 20220224.
- Norder S.J., Becker L., Skirgård H., Arias L., Witzlack-Makarevich A. & Gijn E. van (2022), Glottospace: R package for language mapping and geospatial analysis of linguistic and cultural data, Journal of Open Source Software 7(77): 4303.
- Neureiter N., Ranacher P., Gijn E. van, Bickel B. & Weibel R. (2021), Can Bayesian phylogeography reconstruct migrations and expansions in linguistic evolution?, Royal Society Open Science 8(1): 201079.
- Ranacher P., Neureiter N., Gijn E. van, Sonnenhauser B., Escher A., Weibel R., Muysken P. & Bickel B. (2021), Contact-tracing in cultural evolution: a Bayesian mixture model to detect geographic areas of language contact, Journal of The Royal Society Interface 18(181): 20201031.
- Gijn E. van & Muysken P.C. (2020), Highland-lowland relations: a linguistic view. In: Pearce A., Beresford-Jones D.G. & Heggarty P. (Eds.), Rethinking the Andes-Amazonia divide: a cross-disciplinary exploration: UCL Press. 178-210.
- Gijn E. van (2020), Separating layers of information: the anatomy of contact zones. In: Smith N., Aboh E.O. & Veenstra T. (Eds.), Advances in Contact Linguistics: In honour of Pieter Muysken. Contact Language Library no. 57. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 162-178.
- Gijn E. van (2019), Case markers as subordinators in South American languages. In: Zariquiey R., Shibatani M. & Fleck D.W. (Eds.), Nominalization in languages of the Americas. Typological Studies in Language no. 124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 197-247.
- Gijn E. van (2019), Switch reference in morphology. In: Aronoff Mark & Lieber Rochelle (Eds.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics.
- Majid A., Roberts S.G., Cilissen L., Emmorey K., Nicodemus B., O’Grady L., Woll B., LeLan B., Sousa H. de, Cansler B.L., Shayan S., Vos C. de, Senft G., Enfield N.J., Razak R.A., Fedden S., Tufvesson S., Dingemanse M., Öztürk Ö., Brown P., Hil C.L., Le Guen O., Hirtzel V., Gijn R. van, Sicoli M.A. & Levinson S.C. (2018), The differential coding of perception in the world's languages, PNAS 115(45): 11369-11376.
- Peter Ranacher, Gijn E. van & Curdin Derungs (2017), Identifying probable pathways of language diffusion in South America. .
- Gijn E. van, Hammarström H., Kerke S. van de, Krasnoukhova O. & Muysken P. (2017), Linguistic areas, linguistic convergence, and river systems in South America. In: Hickey R. (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of areal linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 964-996.
- Pieter Muysken & Gijn E. van (2016), River thinking: Arawakan and Pano-Tacanan in the Upper Amazon transition area. .
- Gijn E. van & Hammond Jeremy (Eds.) (2016), Switch reference 2.0. Typological Studies in Language no. 114. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
- Gijn E. van (2016), Switch reference: an overview. In: Gijn E. van & Hammond Jeremy (Eds.), Switch reference 2.0.
- Gijn E. van (2016), Switch reference in western South America. In: Gijn E. van & Hammond J. (Eds.), Switch reference 2.0. Typological Studies in Language no. 114. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 153-206.
- Gijn E. van (2015), Verbal synthesis in the Guaporé-Mamoré linguistic area: a contact feature?, Linguistic Discovery 13(2): 96-122.
- Gijn E. van (2015), Aspects of the diachronic (in)stability of complex morphology, Linguistic Discovery 13(2): 1-22.
- Gijn E. van (2015), Yurakaré. In: Grandi N. & Kortvelyessy L. (Eds.), Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 643-650.
- Gijn E. van, Galucio A.V. & Nogueira A.F. (2015), Subordination strategies in Tupian languages, Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas 10(2): 297-324.
- Gijn Rik. van & Zúñiga F. (2014), Word and the Americanist perspective, Morphology 24(3): 135-160.
- Gijn E. van (2014), Word accent and mapping rules in Yurakaré, Morphology 24(3): 223-244.
- Muysken P., Hammarström H., Birchall J., Danielsen S., Eriksen L., Galucio A.V., Gijn E. van, Kerke S. van de, Kolipakam V., Krasnoukhova O., Müller N. & O'Connor L. (2014), The languages of South America: deep families, areal relationships, and language contact. In: O'Connor L. & Muysken P. (Eds.), The languages of South America: deep families, areal relationships, and language contact.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 299-322.
- Muysken P., Hammarström H., Birchall J., Gijn E. van, Krasnoukhova O. & Müller N. (2014), Linguistic areas, bottom-up or top-down? The case of the Guaporé-Mamoré. . In: Comrie B. & Golluscio L. (Eds.), Language Contact and Documentation / Contacto lingüístico y documentación. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 205-237.
- Gijn E. van (2014), Yurakaré. In: Crevels M. & Muysken P. (Eds.), Oriente. Lenguas de Bolivia no. III. La Paz: Plural editores. 135-173.