Doctoraatposities in de Nederlandse diachrone corpustaalkunde en typologie

Bij het Centre for Linguistics aan de ULiège zijn er twee doctoraatsposities voor vier jaar in de Nederlandse diachrone corpustaalkunde en de typologie. De deadline om te solliciteren is 20 juni 2023. Hieronder staan de volledige aankondigingen:

Project description:

The PhD projects are part of the collaborative research project “Grammar from Space – How spatial elements become applicatives”, funded by the Liège Research Council. The Grammar from Space project will investigate how elements with spatial meaning develop into applicative markers, from a typological and Germanic perspective, with extensions into applied research, viz. translation studies. The project team consists of Lieselotte Brems, Isa Hendrikx, Julien Perrez and An Van linden, as well as three postdoctoral fellows. Two positions for doctoral students are currently available within the project.

1) PhD position in Dutch diachronic corpus linguistics

This PhD project will investigate the well-established adposition-to-applicative pathway on the basis of historical data, adopting a new, valency-centred approach to verb-particle constructions in Dutch, such as doorlopen (door-lopen; through-run; ‘move on, go through’) and onderduiken (under-dive; ‘go into hiding’) and prefixed verbs such as doorlopen (door-lopen; through-run; ‘peruse’) or overreden (over-talk; ‘convince’). A crucial aspect of this project involves tracing the diachronic development of such complex verbs consisting of a particle of spatial origin (e.g. door ‘through’) and a verb (e.g. lopen ‘run’) back to Middle Dutch, while monitoring the valency of the complex verb across time. The supervisor of this PhD is Julien Perrez and the co-supervisor Dirk Pijpops.

Profile:

Master in Linguistics, Linguistics and Literature, or Philology (or equivalent), obtained with excellent grades before the start of the PhD project;
an excellent command of Dutch (native or near-native) and a good command of (spoken and written) academic English; competence in French is a plus in view of the work environment;
experience with corpus linguistic methods and tools, as well as strong analytical skills and creativity; previous experience with statistical analysis of corpus data is an asset;
familiarity with older stages of Dutch and an interest in authentic corpus data of Dutch;
a passion for linguistics and an international orientation (e.g. for research stays abroad during the doctoral period);
the capacity to work independently and as part of a team;
the ability to present research results at international conferences, and to publish in English and/or Dutch in peer-reviewed journals;

Offer:

We offer a fulltime employment as a PhD researcher in the context of the above-mentioned project for 1 year, starting October 2023 or November 2023, renewable until max. 4 years after positive evaluation.
The candidate will have 90% of their time available for their doctoral research activities; 10% will be dedicated to other (administrative or teaching) services.
The candidate will start on a net salary of approximately 2,360 EUR/month, depending on their personal situation. In addition, s/he will be allocated office space and a laptop, and receive funding for research activities like attending conferences abroad.
The candidate will collaborate with and be supported by two supervisors as well as all the members of the project team, and will benefit from the stimulating environment of the research unit Lilith. S/he will also take part in the ULiège doctoral training programme.

Job application:

Applications for the PhD position include:

(i) a cover letter describing your motivation, stating why you want to do this research (in English);

(ii) a detailed CV (in English);

(iii) a list of grades obtained for your Bachelor and Master programmes;

(iv) the names and contact details of two academic referees we may contact prior to appointment;

(v) a sample piece of academic writing (preferably in English, otherwise in Dutch), such as a course paper or BA/MA thesis.

If you are interested in this PhD position, please send your application file in electronic form to:

Prof. Julien Perrez (Julien.Perrez@uliege.be)

Application deadline: 20 June 2023

Interviews will be held with shortlisted candidates in Liège on 30 June 2023 (if needed online for international applicants).

For further information, please contact Prof. Julien Perrez (Julien.Perrez@uliege.be).

***

The University of Liège carries out an equal opportunity and diversity policy.

PhD position in linguistic typology

This PhD project will focus on a recently discovered source of applicatives, viz. spatial verb morphology, like associated motion markers and directionals. Specifically, it will use a world-wide sample to map and investigate spatial verb markers that have applicative functions. The aim is to develop a typology of the formal and functional characteristics of such markers, as well as to discern possible genetic or areal patterns. Examples of the phenomena that will be studied are described in Payne (2021) and Van linden (2022). The supervisor of this PhD is An Van linden and the co-supervisor Dana Louagie.

Payne, D. 2021. The extension of associated motion to direction, aspect and argument structure in Nilotic languages. In A. Guillaume & H. Koch (eds.), Associated Motion, 695-746. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.

Van linden, A. 2022. Spatial prefixes as applicatives in Harakmbut. In S. Pacchiarotti & F. Zúñiga (eds.), Applicative morphology: Neglected syntactic and non-syntactic functions, 129-159. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.