As a theoretical linguist, I am broadly interested in what language can tell us about human cognition. In particular, I study the interaction between the representations of concrete and abstract concepts in the mind. My earlier work also deals with Biblical Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible.
Publications
| In preparation | Staps, Camil. In preparation. Complementation and Common Ground: Discursive effects in Biblical Hebrew. | ||
Rooryck, Johan & Camil Staps. In preparation. Overlap and countability. | |||
| 2026 | Staps, Camil. 2024. Review of: Grace J. Park, Focus Construction with kî ̓im in Biblical Hebrew. Bibliotheca Orientalis 81(5/6):510–515. | ||
| 2025 | Staps, Camil. 2025. Iconic features in nominal reduplication. Linguistic Typology. doi: 10.1515/lingty-2024-0042. | ||
Staps, Camil. 2025. Review of: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, A guide to gender and classifiers. LINGUIST List 36(3268). | |||
| 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. 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. |
Statistics
Software projects
| HebrewTools | Several web applications for Biblical Hebrew education (GitHub). |
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). | |
| 2018 | Jan 26, CLIN28 | Combining grammatical features for dating texts in small-corpus languages (abstract & slides). |
Service & outreach
| 2025 | Reviewer for Religions, DGfS 2026. |
| 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. |
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. |