Job Radboud University Nijmegen - Postdoctoral Researcher for 'Multilingual Processing'

As a postdoctoral researcher you will take part in Traces of Contact, a large-scale project funded by the European Research Council (ERC). The Traces of Contact project aims to establish criteria by which results from language contact studies can be used to strengthen the field of historical linguistics. To this end, the scenario model for language contact studies is applied to a number of concrete settings, which differ widely in their levels of aggregation and dime depth: the languages of the Amazonian fringe in South America, the complex multilingual setting of the Republic of Suriname, the multilingual interaction of immigrant groups in the Netherlands, and two groups of multilingual individuals. New methods from structural phylogenetics are employed, and the same linguistic variables (TMA and evidentiality marking, argument realization) will be studied in various projects. The projects make use of a shared questionnaire, which facilitates gathering comparable data. By applying the scenario model at various levels of aggregation, a more principled link between language contact studies and historical linguistics can be established. Currently, the project has a vacancy for a postdoctoral researcher, who together with a PhD student will be studying multilingual processing of argument realization, TMA and evidentiality marking in Turkish/Dutch and Papiamentu/Dutch bilinguals.

You must have: • a PhD degree in Psycholinguistics or Bilingualism Studies; • good writing and presentation skills; • a good knowledge of Dutch and preferably of one of the immigrant languages in the Netherlands (the choice of the immigrant language is complementary to the PhD’s expertise); • demonstrable affinity and experience with research on bilingualism and/or immigrant languages; • a demonstrable interest in interdisciplinary research; • a good track record of working in teams.

The total duration of the contract is 3 years. You will be offered an initial contract for 1 year, with the possibility of extension by 2 years. You may be asked to give a sample lecture or to take part in an assessment as part of the selection procedure. The salary depends on qualifications and work experience and will be between €3,195 and €4,374 gross per month based on full-time employment.

Strategically located in Europe, Radboud University Nijmegen is one of the leading academic communities in the Netherlands. A place with a personal touch, where top-flight education and research take place on a beautiful green campus in modern buildings with state-of-art facilities.

The Faculty of Arts consists of ten departments in the areas of Language and Culture, History, History of Arts, Linguistics and Business Communication, and collaborate closely in teaching and research. This project is part of the research programme ‘Language in Time and Space’ that is conducted within the Centre for Language Studies research institute, part of the national Graduate School in Linguistics (LOT), a KNAW-recognized research school. The Centre for Language Studies is one of the two research institutes at the Faculty of Arts, Radboud University Nijmegen. It has a staff of around 70 FTE, including some 35 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. About 45% of our research projects are externally funded, five of which have been granted prestigious EURYI/ERC awards. CLS received an outstanding research assessment in 2006. Focused on broadly theoretically based empirical research and affiliated with the on-campus Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, it provides a stimulating research climate and excellent opportunities for graduate training. The research for the present project will be conducted at the Department of Linguistics of Radboud University in a team headed by Prof. P.C. Muysken, coordinator of the Traces of Contact project. The team involves half a dozen post-docs and several PhD students.

Radboud University Nijmegen

Prof. dr P. Muysken
p.muysken@let.ru.nl

http://www.ru.nl/linc