LINGUIST List 22.4906 Wed Dec 07 2011 Jobs: General Linguistics: Strategic Chair (Professor), U of Amsterdam Editor for this issue: Christy Bird <christylinguistlist.org> New! Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:             http://multitree.linguistlist.org/ The LINGUIST List strongly encourages employers to engage in non-discriminatory hiring practices. We urge employers not to discriminate on the grounds of race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, age, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. However, we have no means of enforcing these standards. Job seekers should pay special attention to language in ads regarding employment requirements and are encouraged to consult our international employment page at http://linguistlist.org/jobs/jobnet.html. This page has been set up so that people can report on the employment standards of various countries. To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/posttolinguist.cfm Directory         1.     D. van der Vaart , General Linguistics: Strategic Chair (Professor), University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Message 1: General Linguistics: Strategic Chair (Professor), University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Date: 06-Dec-2011 From: D. van der Vaart <D.vanderVaartuva.nl> Subject: General Linguistics: Strategic Chair (Professor), University of Amsterdam, Netherlands E-mail this message to a friend University or Organization: University of Amsterdam Department: Faculty of Humanities Job Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands Web Address: http://www.hum.uva.nl Job Rank: Professor Specialty Areas: General Linguistics Description: The Faculty has a vacancy for a: Strategic Chair (Professor) of Learnability of Human Languages 38 hours per week (for 5 years) Vacancy number W11-230 This position stems from the Faculty of Humanities' decision to adopt Brain and Cognition as one of its three research priority areas for the next five years. The aim of the Brain and Cognition research priority area is to promote and deliver international, interdisciplinary, and leading-edge research in a rapidly evolving field of study. The Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication carries out its research programme on Learnability within the context of this research priority area and gives a broad and novel interpretation to the notion of learnability, as a result of which it bridges research in a number of areas within linguistics, such as language acquisition, language change, and language typology. It does so by studying a number of related hypotheses. (1) The language data that children hear is impoverished, in the sense that (a) some crucial types of data may never appear in the child's input, (b) the data that does appear only gives superficial information about the structures that generated the data in the speaker's brain, and (c) the data will contain noise as a result of errors or ellipses by the speaker and as a result of imperfections in the transmission channels. On the basis of such impoverished input children will construct their own internal language. (2) When constructing their own language, the children will almost inevitably end up speaking somewhat differently from their parents and peers. Such changes will not only be apparent in the histories of single languages, but even more dramatically in second language acquisition (where learners start with an already present language system rather than from scratch) and in language creation processes such as creolization (where no single mother tongue is available). (3) By evoking change, learnability problems lead to typological variation between languages. Given this set of hypotheses, the involvement of researchers with different types of orientations and research interests is necessary to come to grips with the issue of learnability in this wide sense. The ACLC is ideally placed to initiate this type of debate, as it is home to a highly diversified group of linguists, addressing linguistic issues from a wide variety of angles, and in a collaborative spirit. Tasks: The professor of learnability should, apart from bringing a relevant and innovative research agenda to the programme, bring researchers working on individual aspects of the learnability problem together, formulate new, broad research programmes in which these researchers can collaborate, and acquire funding for these programmes. The candidate to be appointed will thus play an important leadership role in the Learnability research programme, and will furthermore create a bridge between ACLC research and research carried out at the ILLC. The ILLC participates in the research focus area Brain and Cognition with its research programme on Cognitive modeling. Apart from her/his involvement in the research priority area, the candidate will play a prominent role in teaching courses and in curriculum development in the general area of Learnability and Linguistics and will be actively involved in PhD supervision. The candidate is furthermore expected to be an ambassador of the priority area and actively liaise and work with stakeholders both within and outside of the university sector. See for further information: http://www.hum.uva.nl/aclc under Vacancies. Application Deadline: 10-Jan-2012 Mailing Address for Applications: prof. dr. J.W. van Henten Spuistraat 210 Amsterdam 1012 VT Netherlands Email Address for Applications: solliciteren2011-FGWuva.nl Contact Information: dr D. van der Vaart Email: D.vanderVaartuva.nl Phone: 0031205253804 Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 07-Dec-2011       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.