The project The nature of evidentiality is a five year research program carried out at Leiden University under the direction of  professor Johan Rooryck and  professor Willem Adelaar. The project is funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). It intends to investigate the theoretical status and the terminological basis of evidentiality systems. The research team will be composed of the project supervisors, a postdoctoral researcher, and two Ph.D. candidates.

We invite applications for the two Ph.D. positions in the research program.

Ph. D. Project 1:

Evidentials in the languages of South America: semantic diversity, typology and genesis

The native languages of South America show great diversity in the expression of evidential markers. This project aims at charting the semantic distinctions in the domain of evidentiality in these languages as well as their morphological expression. The project will investigate the genesis and typology of evidential categories, and the way they relate to other grammatical domains.

Ph.D. Project 2

Evidentiality in Romance and Germanic: grammatical possibilities and limits

In Romance and Germanic languages, evidentiality is most often not expressed by morphological means, but by adverbs, auxiliaries, and parentheticals. This project will investigate the syntactic and semantic properties and restrictions on the grammatical expression of evidentiality in these languages, comparing them to the expression of evidentiality in e.g. the languages of South America.

Tasks:

- participation in the MPhil program of LUCL.
- presentation of research results at international conferences.
- helping to organize a conference on the project topic.
- writing articles for international journals.
- writing a dissertation under the direction of the project supervisors.
- collaboration with the postdoctoral researcher.

Your profile:

- a MA degree in Linguistics, or a Romance, a Germanic, or Amerindian language(s), with specialisation in linguistics.
- an ability to work independently but in close collaboration with the other team members and the project supervisors.
- a curious, enterprising, and creative mind; excellent analytical skills.
- good writing skills, fluency in English.
- an interest in relating intricate language data to advanced linguistic theorizing.
- an outstanding record of undergraduate and Master’s level work

Deadline for receipt of application: May 15, 2008

Filed under: PhD, Research, leiden, netherland, PhD position, Postdoctoral, researcher, scientific