Le LabEx-EFL (Laboratory of Excellence Empirical Foundations in Linguistics) recrute un.e candidat.e doctoral.e pour un poste à temps plein (100%) sur 3 ans en Linguistique Expérimentale avec un salaire net d’environ 1700 EUR net, commençant le 01/10/2021.
La thèse portera sur une des thématiques ci-dessous, appartenant à l’Axe 2, Experimental grammar in a cross linguistic perspective.
Le doctorant sera rattaché au Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle (http://www.llf.cnrs.fr), à l’Ecole Doctorale Sciences du Langage (http://ed132.ed.univ-paris-diderot.fr/doku.php) et l’EUR Paris Graduate school of Linguistics (paris-gsl.org).
Un financement sera disponible pour les missions, l’équipement et les expériences. L’étudiant devra assister à des séminaires doctoraux, et pourra éventuellement assurer des cours au sein du Département de Linguistique.
Pour le descriptif du poste, les compétences requises, et des contacts pour plus d’information, voir ci-dessous.
Pour des questions concernant la procédure de candidature, contacter abeille@linguist.univ-paris-diderot.fr
Pour candidater :
Le dossier de candidature doit être envoyé à abeille@linguist.univ-paris-diderot.fr et le contact du projet auquel vous candidatez.
Date limite de candidature : 15 avril 2021 (minuit MET).
Le dossier doit être composé de :
- une lettre de motivation mentionnant explicitement le projet individuel pour lequel le/la candidate se présente
- un CV incluant les cours suivis (notes de master) et diplômes obtenus
- le nom et contact de deux références.
Les candidat.e.s présélectionné.e.s enverront leur mémoire de master et/ou d’autres travaux écrits montrant leur qualification pour le projet en question.
Les auditions (par vidéoconférence) des candidat.e.s présélectionné.e.s auront lieu en mai 2021.
The application file must target one of the following projects/workpackages:
1) Workpackage Relative clauses : acquisition, typology, description (REL)
dir: Anne Abeillé (abeille@linguist.univ-paris-diderot.fr) co-dir: Barbara Hemforth
Profile: Evaluating meaning based approaches to locality constraints: The project will be based on previous experiments on English and French ‘subject’ islands which show cross-constructions differences to locality constraints (with it-clefts and wh-questions being subject to the contrainst while relative clauses are not). The goal will be to test other ‘islands’, other constructions and other languages.
2) Workpackage Ellipsis and Fragments
dir: Anne Abeillé (abeille@linguist.univ-paris-diderot.fr)
Profile: Evaluating meaning based approaches to elliptic constructions: based on previous corpus studies and experiments, showing acceptable VP ellipsis with nominal antecedents, or acceptable RNR with voice mismatch, the goal will be to test other elliptical constructions and other mismatches, for example gender mismatch in gapping and stripping.
3) Workpackage Pluralities, worlds and events (PLU)
dir: Lucia M. Tovena (tovena@linguist.univ-paris-diderot.fr)
Profile 1: Scalarity and mini/maximisers
Possible topics for a PhD thesis include (i) corpus-based analyses of the role of 'single'---or its counterparts in other languages---in the narrow scope interpretation of indefinite nominals with the function of minimiser, (ii) corpus-based analyses of intensifier uses of 'single' akin to maximisers and possibly inducing exhaustification effects, (iii) a diachronic analysis of the evolution of the Latin singulus to its descendants in Romance languages; (iv) a more theory-oriented research that would attempt a formal characterisation of these types of use, aiming at clarifying the respective roles of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic factors. Profile 2: Superlatives and definiteness
Romance languages do not have a dedicated morphological marker for the superlative (no counterpart of the English -est or most) but instead convey superlative meanings by using comparative markers associated with definiteness. This morphological uniformity corresponds to quite different syntactic configurations, depending on whether the definite article is part of a superlative constituent or instead realizes the determiner of the overall nominal projection. Possible topics for a PhD thesis are: (i) Superlative adverbs and quantity superlatives (i.e., superlatives of MANY/MUCH, FEW/LITTLE) across Romance languages; (ii) Superlatives in predicative positions across Romance languages; (iii) Definiteness marking and the absolute vs relative readings of superlatives.
The candidate is expected to have some previous knowledge of formal syntax and semantics. Expertise in pragmatics and diachronic studies are a plus.
4) Workpackage Language specific prosodic cues in online sentence comprehension (PROCUE)
Dir. Giuseppina Turco (giuseppinaturco.linguistics@gmail.com)
Profile: Prosodic priming as a window into prosodic and syntactic boundaries
The goal of this PhD project is to investigate language-specific uses of prosodic structure for sentence processing by comparing French and English. Previous work on processing suggests that prosodic boundary plays an important role in syntactic (ambiguity) resolution. Yet, the question remains as to what type of prosodic information guides (and anticipates) listeners’ online sentence interpretation, and how listeners process prosodic information (e.g. incremental type of processing). In the current PhD project, these questions will be tested with a series of experiments on “prosodic priming”, based on EEG and eye-tracking. This thesis will contribute to deepen our understanding on the interaction of language and cognition.