I am a linguist, broadly interested in what language can tell us about human cognition. I am currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft.
The Bigger Question I aim to address is how abstract concepts like causation and evidentiality are represented in the mind. In particular, I study the relation between spatial and non-spatial meanings of prepositions, demonstratives, and other function words. I defended my doctoral dissertation in June 2024.
Publications
| In preparation | Staps, Camil. In preparation. Iconic features in nominal reduplication. | ||
Staps, Camil. In preparation. Complementation and Common Ground: Discursive effects in Biblical Hebrew. | |||
| 2024 | Staps, Camil. 2024. The persistence of space: Formalizing the polysemy of spatial relations in functional elements. Leiden University dissertation. Amsterdam: LOT. doi: 10.48273/LOT0673. (There are errata.) | ||
Staps, Camil. 2024. Large Language Models and Biblical Hebrew: Limitations, pitfalls, opportunities. HIPHIL Novum 9(1):46–55. doi: 10.7146/hn.v9i1.144177. | |||
Staps, Camil & Martijn Beukenhorst. 2024. Semantic properties of prepositions: The distinction between causal min ‘from’ and bə ‘in’. Brill's Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics 16(2):217–250. doi: 10.1163/18776930-01602002. | |||
Staps, Camil & Johan Rooryck. 2024. Formalizing spatial-causal polysemy of Agent prepositions. Semantics & Pragmatics 17(4):1–47. doi: 10.3765/sp.17.4. | |||
| 2023 | Staps, Camil & Johan Rooryck. 2023. The interpretation of [+distal] in demonstratives and complementizers. Linguistics 61(5):1195–1231. doi: 10.1515/ling-2022-0178. | ||
| 2022 | Staps, Camil. 2022. Voice, discourse prominence, and aspect: The niphal and passive qal of yālad. In Pierre Van Hecke & Hanneke van Loon (eds.), Where is the way to the dwelling of light? Studies in Genesis, Job and linguistics in honor of Ellen van Wolde, 387–408. Leiden: Brill. doi: 10.1163/9789004536296_020. | ||
Staps, Camil. 2022. Lip̄nē ‘in the face of’: A Locative preposition with a threatening connotation. Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 22(1):1–24. doi: 10.5508/jhs29582. | |||
| 2021 | Staps, Camil. 2021. Review of: Peter Bekins, Inscriptions from the world of the Bible: A reader and introduction to Old Northwest Semitic. Bibliotheca Orientalis 78(5/6):723–726. | ||
Staps, Camil. 2021. Review of: Margaret Winters, Historical linguistics. LINGUIST List 32(1438). | |||
| 2020 | Staps, Camil. 2020. “When dust was poured out”: Creation in Job 38.36–38. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 44(3):456–471. doi: 10.1177/0309089219862828. | ||
Staps, Camil. 2020. Prepositions and the grammaticalization of Ancient Hebrew bipartite reciprocal markers. Journal of Semitic Studies 65(1):61–84. doi: 10.1093/jss/fgz050. | |||
Staps, Camil. 2020. Review of: Elitzur A. Bar-Asher Siegal, The NP-strategy for expressing reciprocity. Bibliotheca Orientalis 77(3/4):318–322. | |||
| 2019 | Staps, Camil, John van Groningen & Rinus Plasmeijer. 2019. Lazy interworking of compiled and interpreted code for sandboxing and distributed systems. In Jurriën Stutterheim & Wei Ngan Chin (eds.), Implementation and Application of Functional Languages (IFL '19), September 25–27, 2019, Singapore, Singapore. doi: 10.1145/3412932.3412941. | ||
Staps, Camil. 2019. Lazy interworking of compiled and interpreted code for sandboxing and distributed systems. Radboud University Nijmegen MSc. thesis. | |||
Staps, Camil. 2019. Tense, aspect and modality in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic. Leiden University MA. thesis. | |||
| 2018 | Staps, Camil. 2018. A case study of reciprocal middles in Biblical Hebrew: The niphal of לחם. Orientalia 87(2):159–183. | ||
| 2017 | Staps, Camil. 2017. Code generation for the Thumb-2 instruction set. Radboud University Nijmegen BSc. thesis. |
Talks
| 2025 | Feb 9, IcoSem3 | Iconic features in nominal reduplication (abstract; slides). |
| Jan 31, Taaldag | Iconic features in nominal reduplication (slides). | |
| 2024 | Feb 2, Taaldag | With Johan Rooryck. The raadselen/#raadsels ‘riddles’ behind Dutch double plurals (slides). |
| 2023 | Oct 13, SPE12/OASIS | With Johan Rooryck. Interpreting [+distal] complementizers as markers of Common Ground (slides; handout). |
| 2022 | Dec 9, CogLing Days | With Johan Rooryck. Finite complementizers as demonstratives in the clausal domain (slides; handout). |
| Nov 21, SBL Annual | With Martijn Beukenhorst. Semantic properties of prepositions: the distinction between causal מן and ב (slides). | |
| Nov 9, COCOA | With Johan Rooryck. Space in the causal chain: The perspective from French and Biblical Hebrew (handout). | |
| Aug 25, SLE2022 | With Johan Rooryck. On the demonstratives nature of finite complementizers (slides; handout). | |
| Jan 12, AIL2 | With Johan Rooryck. French double Agents: a force-theoretic account of de and par (handout). | |
| 2020 | Jan 10, NL-FP day | With John van Groningen and Rinus Plasmeijer. Lazy interworking of compiled and interpreted code. |
| 2019 | Sep 27, IFL31 | By Rinus Plasmeijer, with John van Groningen. Lazy interworking of compiled and interpreted code for sandboxing and distributed systems. |
| 2018 | Jan 26, CLIN28 | Combining grammatical features for dating texts in small-corpus languages (abstract & slides). |
| Jan 5, NL-FP day | Cloogle: a programming language search engine and its applications (abstract & slides). |
Service & outreach
| 2025 | Problem and presentation for the Deutsche Linguistik-Olympiade. |
| 2024–2025 | Proofreader for Language Science Press. |
| 2024 | Reviewer for Glossa. |
| 2023 | Reviewer for Glossa, Open Mind, and The New Scholar. |
Statistics
I keep track of time from submission to publication for my writings, as well as the conferences I visit and how much CO2 I emit in doing so.
Software projects
| Məḇaqqēš | A spreadsheet application for scholars of the Hebrew Bible and Biblical Hebrew. |
| HebrewTools | Several web applications for Biblical Hebrew education (GitHub). |
| Nitrile | A package manager for the functional programming language Clean. |
| Cloogle | A search engine for Clean code (GitLab). |
Find more on GitLab, GitHub, and git.camilstaps.nl.
Teaching
| 2022–2023 | Hebrew I–II, Radboud University Nijmegen (10 ECTS). |
| 2021–2022 | Hebrew I–II, Radboud University Nijmegen (10 ECTS). |
| 2020–2021 | Hebrew II, Radboud University Nijmegen (5 ECTS). |
| Hebrew I–III, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (15 ECTS). | |
| 2015–2019 | Student assistant for various courses in computing science, Radboud University Nijmegen. See under Employment for a list of courses. |
Grants
| 2024–2026 | NWO Rubicon, €144K (for two years post-doctoral research at ZAS Berlin; grant no. 019.233SG.004). |
| 2019–2024 | NWO PhDs in the Humanities, €249K (applied for by Holger Gzella; grant no. PGW.19.015). |
Employment
| Sep 2024–present | Researcher, Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft. |
| Apr 2024–Aug 2024 | Compiler engineer, TASKING. |
| Sep 2019–Apr 2024 | PhD candidate, Leiden University & Radboud University Nijmegen. Supervised by Johan Rooryck and Ellen van Wolde. |
| Feb 2023–Jun 2023 | Lecturer, Radboud University Nijmegen. |
| Sep 2019–Aug 2021 | Scientific programmer / software architect, TOP Software. |
| Feb 2021–Jul 2021 | Lecturer, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. |
| Sep 2015–Aug 2019 | Student assistant, Radboud University Nijmegen (click for an overview of activities).2018–19: work on the Clean ecosystem 2017–18: Combinatorics, Functional Programming for AI 2016–17: Algorithms and Data Structures, Combinatorics, Functional Programming for AI, Functional Programming 1, Introduction to Cryptography, Operating Systems 2015–16: Combinatorics, Functional Programming 1, Functional Programming 2, Introduction to Cryptography, Mathematical Structures |
| May 2013–Mar. 2019 | Owner of ViviSoft. |
Education
| 2019–2024 | PhD. in Linguistics, Leiden University (cum laude). |
| 2017–2019 | Research MA. in Hebrew and Aramaic Studies, Leiden University (cum laude). |
| 2017–2019 | MSc. in Software Science, Radboud University Nijmegen (summa cum laude). |
| 2014–2017 | BSc. in Computing Science, Radboud University Nijmegen (cum laude). |