University or Organization: Humboldt-Universität Berlin
Department: Institut für Romanistik
Job Location: Berlin, Germany
Web Address: https://www.romanistik.hu-berlin.de/de
Job Title: Researcher (m/f/d) with expected 100% employment - E13 TV-L HU
Job Rank: Post Doc

Specialty Areas: Applied Linguistics; Morphology; Sociolinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics

Required Language(s): Spanish (spa)

Description:

The Chair of Romance Linguistics (Spanish) at the Institut für Romanistik of Humboldt University in Berlin is pleased to offer a postdoctoral researcher position associated with the project "On the interplay between register and dialectal variation in Canarian Spanish morpho-syntax," based on the hree-dimensional communication model of diasystematic variation by P. Koch and W. Österreicher ([1985] 2012). This project focuses on typical linguistic phenomena of the Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands in a variety of contexts that can be classified on a continuum from the most informal to the most formal.

Specifically, this project investigates the interaction between register and dialectal variation as manifested in the use (or absence) of three typical morpho-syntactic phenomena of Spanish spoken in the Islands: (i) the (non-)agreement of the existential verb haber with a plural noun (e.g., había.3SG vs. habían.3PL ‘there were’); (ii) the variation in complements in locative adverbial contexts (e.g., enfrente de nosotros ‘in front of us’ vs. enfrente nuestro/a ‘lit. in front of ours’), and (iii) the possessive expression in nominal environments (e.g., nuestra casa ‘our house’ vs. la casa nuestra ‘lit. the house ours‘ vs. la casa de nosotros/as ‘lit. the house of us’). The aim is to verify the possibility that in the Canary Islands, one or several standard, regional, and normative varieties are developing alongside other intermediate varieties, as expected in a diaglossic environment.

This project is part of the larger Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1412 on Register: Language Users’ Knowledge of Situational-Functional Variation, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG: https://sfb1412.hu-berlin.de/). Therefore, the availability and confirmation of this postdoctoral position depend on the grant approval from the DFG for this project. The final decision is expected by the end of November 2023. Only if the funding is granted, the position will be filled.

Task description
- research and scientific services in the field of Hispanic linguistics
- linguistics: morphosyntactic variationin Canarian Spanish (diatopic, diastratic and register variation)
- scientific services in the field of register variation
- participation in the activities of the SFB Register and the Chair of Romance Linguistics (Spanish)
- tasks for personal scientific qualification (post-doctoral thesis)

Requirements
- completed scientific university Master’s degree and PhD
- research interest in Hispanic and Ibero-Romance linguistics
- research focus (in the context of a post-doctoral thesis): Diatopic, Diastratic and register variation in Canarian Spanish (with fieldwork and experimental research)
- focus on Spanish morphosyntax
- experience in fieldwork and advanced statistical skills are desirable
- very good knowledge of Spanish and English
- knowledge of another language relevant to research and teaching at the Institute is desirable

Please send your application (including a letter of motivation, curriculum vitae, list of publications, possibly also list of lectures/ posters and further training, completed or current research projects, teaching experience, research concept (in the context of a doctoral or postdoctoral thesis)) quoting the reference number DR/129/23 in a single pdf file to the email address for applications listed below.

Application Deadline: 10-Dec-2023
Mailing Address for Applications:

Email Address for Applications: [email protected]
Contact Information:
Prof. Dr. Miriam Bouzouita
Email: [email protected]