LINGUIST List 12.2231

Thu Sep 13 2001

Support: Lang Acquisition: PhD Scholarship, Netherlands

Editor for this issue: Karolina Owczarzak <karolinalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Prof.Melissa Bowerman, Lang Acquisition: PhD Scholarship, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Rank of Job: PhD Scholarship
Areas Required: Language Acquisition
Other Desired Areas: 
University or Organization: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Department: P.O.Box 310
State or Province: 6500 AH Nijmegen
Country: The Netherlands
Final Date of Application: Oct. 15, 2001
Contact: Prof. Melissa Bowerman melissa.bowermanmpi.nl

Address for Applications:
Postbus 310
Nijmegen
 6500 AH
The Netherlands

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
Nijmegen, The Netherlands

PhD Scholarship - Language Acquisition Group

The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics solicits applications
for a position in the field of First Language Acquisition. The
student will participate in the Event Representation Project of the
Institute (see below). The position will run for three years and is
available immediately.

Applicants should have completed a B.A. or a Master's degree or
equivalent in linguistics, psychology, or a related field, and they
should have an interest in how languages encode events and their
participants, and how children acquire these structures in the course
of language development. The successful applicant will develop a
dissertation project of his or her own choosing that can contribute to
the overall goals of the Event Representation Project. Specific
focuses could range from traditional argument structure concerns
(e.g., event types, predicate semantics and predicate classes, marking
of participants, argument linking, argument ellipsis) to
interdisciplinary issues to do with how events are perceived and
apprehended, and how different languages represent "the same" event in
different ways (e.g., with a single-verb clause, a serial-verb clause,
multiple clauses, or with different patterns for packaging given types
of meaning into lexical items). Applicants may work with children
learning any language or languages, but preference may be given to
applicants working on the acquisition of lesser- known languages.

Applications should include a curriculum vitae, a description of
previous related studies and research, a sample of written work, names
and addresses of two referees, and a characterization of plans or
interests for the Ph.D research. Candidates must also already have,
or be prepared to find, a suitable university affiliation. (This can
perhaps be arranged through MPI staff if necessary.) Payment is
regulated according to the scale of the Max Planck Society (one half
of the scale II a BAT - (Bundesangestelltentarifvertrag, The Tariff
Agreemennt for the German Federal Employees). Please send
applications via regular mail for arrival by Oct. 15, 2001 to:


Prof. Melissa Bowerman
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Postbus 310
6500 AH Nijmegen
The Netherlands

E-mail inquiries concerning the position may be made to Melissa Bowerman
(melissa.bowermanmpi)
or Penelope Brown (pbrownmpi.nl).

The Event Representation Project includes participants from both the
language acquisition and the Language and Cognition departments of the
Institute. As a continuation and expansion of the former Argument
Structure Project, this project is dedicated to the cross-linguistic
study of how events are construed for purposes of linguistic encoding,
and how children acquire the lexical items and morphosyntactic
structures and patterns that allow them to linguistically represent
events in the ways characteristic of their language/language
community. An additional focus is the relationship between the
linguistic encoding of events and the nonlinguistic (perceptual and
cognitive) apprehension of events.