[Corpora-List] Fluency and disfluency: Three PhD positions University of Louvain

[Liesbeth Degand]

The Institute for Language and Communication at the Université 
catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) has three PhD openings 
within the framework of the research project "*Fluency and disfluency 
markers. A multimodal contrastive perspective*" conducted jointly by the 
CECL (Centre for English Corpus Linguistics), VALIBEL -- Discours et 
Variation and CENTAL (Centre de traitement automatique du langage) in 
collaboration with the University of Namur (Namur Research College). The 
aim of the research project is to investigate markers of fluency and 
disfluency in spoken and sign language, focusing on three main 
modalities: first language discourse (French and English), (advanced) 
foreign language discourse (English), and sign language (Belgian 
French). Our central working hypothesis will be that fluency and 
disfluency markers are two faces of the same phenomenon. We will 
furthermore assume that their forms and functions vary systematically 
according to the language, speakers, and discourse genres at stake. The 
methodological approach will be that of corpus analysis (corpus-based 
and corpus-driven).

The selected candidates will be engaged in a 4-year PhD project under 
the supervision of one or two of the six promoters of the research 
project in the following three areas:

-PhD 1: Prosodic markers of fluency and disfluency in spoken French

-PhD 2: Fluency and disfluency in English native and learner speech

-PhD 3: Discourse markers as (dis)fluency markers in English and French 
speech

Profile:

-Master in linguistics or modern languages (major in linguistics), with 
honours

-Native or near-native speaker of French (PhD 1) or English (PhD 2) and 
very good knowledge of both languages for PhD 3

-High level of academic English

-Good knowledge of linguistic statistics or commitment to acquire it

-Familiarity with corpus linguistic methods and tools

-Dynamic and motivated

-Capacity to work independently and as part of a team

-Previous experience with the analysis of spoken language and/or 
discourse features is an asset

We offer a motivating research environment with many opportunities for 
collaboration with other researchers working on the same project. The 
salary consists of a PhD grant including social security (+/- 1500 EUR 
net/month).

Start of grant: between September 1^st , 2012 and January 1^st , 2013

Deadline: Review of applications will begin on July 15^th 2012 and 
continue until the position is filled.

If you are interested in one of the above PhD grants, please send a 
letter of motivation, a CV, and two references in electronic form to:

PhD 1: Anne Catherine Simon (anne-catherine.simon at uclouvain.be)

PhD 2: Gaëtanelle Gilquin (gaetanelle.gilquin at uclouvain.be) and Sylviane 
Granger (sylviane.granger at uclouvain.be)

PhD 3: Liesbeth Degand (liesbeth.degand at uclouvain.be) and Gaëtanelle 
Gilquin (gaetanelle.gilquin at uclouvain.be)

Additional information:

Institute for Language and Communication: www.uclouvain.be/ilc 
<http://www.uclouvain.be/ilc>

(Dis)fluency project: http://www.uclouvain.be/415256.html

Centre for English Corpus Linguistics: www.uclouvain.be/cecl 
<http://www.uclouvain.be/cecl>

CENTAL: www.uclouvain.be/cental <http://www.uclouvain.be/cental>

Valibel -- Discours & Variation: www.uclouvain.be/valibel 
<http://www.uclouvain.be/valibel>

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/html
Size: 34788 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.uib.no/mailman/public/corpora/attachments/20120606/6e7f6292/attachment.txt>