Institution/Organization: University of Tübingen, English Dept.

Level: PhD

Duties: Research

Specialty Areas: General Linguistics; Pragmatics; Psycholinguistics; Syntax
Required Language(s): English (eng)
German (deu)

Description:

PhD positions in Linguistics at the University of Tübingen

Two PhD positions are available in the DFB-funded Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1718 Common Ground: Cognition – Grammar – Communication.

PhD researchers in empirical syntax and/or pragmatics
(m/f/d, E13 TV-L, 75%)

The positions are located at the University of Tübingen, Germany. They begin on 1st October 2025 or as soon as possible afterwards, and run until 30th June 2029.

The posts are within the sub-project B6 Syntax Interacts with Common Ground: Non-Canonical Inversion Structures with project leaders Katrin Axel-Tober (German Dept.), Sam Featherston, Susanne Winkler (English Dept.). This project will investigate the conditions on and interpretative features of exceptional inversion structures in English such as ‘Into the room marched the bishop, a snarl on his face.’

Topics for doctorates could concern questions such:
- what contextual factors (text genre, information structure, and shared background knowledge) must come together to license such a structure?
- what is the syntactic structure of such examples?
- what does the inverted version contribute to the interpretation more than an uninverted version (‘The bishop marched into the room’)?
- how do these structures relate to superficially similar-looking German examples?

Theses will be jointly supervised by the project leaders and can be within the fields of German Linguistics or English Linguistics, but they are likely to have an empirical component.

The candidates should have finished their Masters degree in a related field of Linguistics by the start date of the project, and they should be enthusiastic about the work of the project. The project leaders will guide the research, and offer frequent support, advice, and consultation. The CRC offers an exceptionally rich research environment with excellent opportunities to work together with many other linguists on topics across the field. These posts therefore offer the ideal entry point to an academic career in linguistics.

Applications will be processed from the closing date but if the positions are not filled, further applications would be acceptable after this date.

Application Deadline: 15-Jul-2025

Mailing Address for Applications:
Germany
Email Address for Applications: [email protected]

Contact Information:
Sam Featherston