We invite indications of interest for nine two-year postdoctoral positions with expertise in language acquisition, morpho-syntax and semantics to carry out large-scale, crosslinguistic child language research. The positions are within the “LeibnizDream” (leibnizdream.eu) project, approved by the European Research Council in the Synergy Grant 2019 call. The core research team of LeibnizDream will be based at three host institutions. The openings are distributed over the host institutions, PIs, and research profiles as follows:
at UniMiB (“Acquirer Group”, PI Maria Teresa Guasti):
three post-doctoral positions with main expertise in language acquisition, desired assets: eye tracking, statistics / data science, language-comparative experience, theoretical linguistics
at HU (“Compressor Group”, PI Artemis Alexiadou):
three positions with main expertise in morphology, desired assets: cross-linguistic morphology, morphological acquisition, computational morphology, syntax, semantics, experimental methods
at ZAS (“Generator Group”, PI Uli Sauerland):
three positions with main expertise in semantics, desired assets: cross-linguistic semantics, syntax/semantics interface, semantic acquisition, morpho-semantics, experimental methods
All positions are to start between January 1st, 2021 or soon after. All contracts will be until the end of 2022, but they may be extended for up to four more years in the case of outstanding accomplishments. The salary at HU and ZAS will be according to E13 of the TVL or the TVOeD pay-scale respectively, and also competitive at UniMiB.
The duty of the positions is to carry out research as described by the project application. The plan is to carry out comparative experiments in language acquisition across up to 50 different languages in collaboration with partners across the globe. We target six different areas of morpho-syntax/semantics, 1) the expression of causation and agency, and 2) of motion events, 3) the binary connectives, 4) negative concepts such as exclusion, antonyms, and negation, 5) quantificational concepts including genericity and distributivity, and 6) dependencies most frequently analyzed as variable binding (wh-questions, relative clauses, degree clauses). The postdocs will work in small teams across these domains to prepare, carry out experiments, oversee the process of data collection, and then analyse and publish acquisition studies in these domains. Intensive interaction with the collaborators from different countries will be part of the research. The project aims for cultural diversity and gender balance of its staff. The project furthermore seeks to implement the principles of open science.
An expression of interest must be submitted via electronic mail (subject should include: “LeibnizDream”) and include the following (1, 2 and 3 in PDF format, ideally in one PDF file): 1) a letter of intent specifying research experience and intended contributions to the project, as well as the starting date; 2) the curriculum vitae including a complete list of publications; 3) electronic copies of up to three representative writings; and 4) the names and email addresses of at least two scholars to be contacted for letters of recommendation. Interested researchers wishing for secure communication with PGP can contact us for the necessary encryption key. Please note that the positions are still subject to availability of funding and a hiring procedure in compliance with institutional requirements will still be advertised.
Application deadline: May 1st, 2020
Email for applications: Sofia Rustioni <s.rustioni3@campus.unimib.it>