LINGUIST List 24.2483

Tue Jun 18 2013

Jobs: Modified: Comp Ling; Morphology; Typology: Post Doc, Empirical Foundations of Linguistics Project

Editor for this issue: Sarah Fox <sarahlinguistlist.org>


Date: 18-Jun-2013
From: Olivier Bonami <olivier.bonamiparis-sorbonne.fr>
Subject: Modified: Computational Linguistics; Morphology; Typology: Post Doc, Empirical Foundations of Linguistics Project, Paris, France
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University or Organization: Empirical Foundations of Linguistics Project Job Location: Paris, France Web Address: http://www.labex-efl.org/
Job Rank: Post Doc

Specialty Areas: Computational Linguistics; Morphology; Typology


Description:

Deadline Extension: June 28

The 10 year research project "Empirical Foundations of linguistics" is hiring a postoctoral researcher on the following topic:

Quantitative assessment of inflectional complexity

The postdoc will work in the strand on "Experimental Grammar". He or she will be employed by Université Paris Diderot (Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle) for 12 months, starting between October and December 2013, and earn 24 000 € for the full year.

Applicants should have defended their PhD by September, 2013. Applications should be sent by email to Olivier Bonami (olivier.bonamiuniv-paris-diderot.fr
Wep page: http://www.labex-efl.org/?q=fr/node/176
EFL project: http://www.labex-efl.org

Detailed Description:
Recent years have witnessed a rise of interest in the quantitative study of morphological systems. Two main challenges of this emerging research area are (i) the focus on a small set of closely related languages in the previous literature, and (ii) the lack of quantitative measures that address the multifactorial nature of inflectional complexity.

The 10 year research project Empirical Foundations of Linguistics provides a unique opportunity to address these issues. Bringing together 13 research teams in the Paris area, it involves specialists of a vast set of typologically diverse languages together with experts in theoretical linguistics, computational linguistics, and psycholinguistics.

The candidate will join an interdisciplinary research group of about 10 researchers belonging to the EFL project that work together on the construction, use and evaluation of quantitative measures for different aspects of inflectional complexity. A long term goal is to evaluate experimentally the impact of inflectional complexity.

The candidate’s tasks will include:
- Collecting or designing appropriate linguistic resources for a typologically diverse sample of languages for the purposes of assessing inflectional complexity.
- Assessing the applicability and relevance of existing measures for this sample.
- Contributing to the design and implementation of new quantitative measures for aspects of inflectional complexity that have not been discussed in the previous literature.

The ideal candidate would be a linguist or a computational linguist trained in contemporary morphological theories, with advanced knowledge of linguistic typology and field methods, and familiar with the application of quantitative methods to extensive linguistic data. We are aware that few potential candidates will match this ideal profile in full, and will therefore consider all applications that substantially overlap with it.

There is no predefined linguistic domain of interest. The current group has competence and readily available resources on Germanic, Iranian, Romance, Afro-Asiatic, Finno-Ugric, and South Caucasian languages, as well as Meso-American languages (with particular focus on the Oto-Manguean phylum) and Creole languages. One of the goals of the project is to expand our understanding of the inflectional systems of these language families, but a candidate bringing relevant expertise on a specific language or language family not included in the list above will also be welcome to participate in the project.

The candidate will also have an opportunity to participate in the other activities of the larger EFL project and join a thriving community with a shared interest in empirical, quantitative and experimental approaches to linguistics.

Application Deadline: 28-Jun-2013 Email Address for Applications: olivier.bonamiuniv-paris-diderot.fr Contact Information:
Olivier Bonami Email: olivier.bonamiparis-sorbonne.fr

Page Updated: 18-Jun-2013