Center of Linguistics

Prosody: Post Doc, University of Lisbon/Center of Linguistics, Portugal
University or Organization: University of Lisbon/Center of Linguistics
Job Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Web Address: http://www.clul.ul.pt/

Job Rank: Post Doc

Specialty Areas: Phonetics; Phonology; Prosody

Description:

The Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon is broadly based,
interdisciplinary and internationally oriented.

The faculty offers courses
and conducts research in languages and cultures of Western, Central,
Eastern and Southern Europe, history, archaeology, art history,
performative and visual arts, literature, philosophy, communication,
translation and media studies, as well as African and Asian studies.
Graduate courses are strongly interweaved with research centres, and
graduate students amount to one third of the Faculty students. The Centre
of Linguistics (CLUL) is committed to theoretical, theoretically oriented,
descriptive and experimental research leading to novel (gap-filling)
contributions to linguistic analysis, as well to making available to the
scientific community new language resources such as corpora, databases and
tools that may significantly contribute to linguistic and multidisciplinary
research. Understanding language variation has been a long-standing
objective within CLUL. However, the study of language variation has only
very recently targeted prosodic variation, both within CLUL and elsewhere.
The inspection of the prosodic properties of local varieties of European
Portuguese is thus largely to be done. Therefore, questions like how the
organization of speech into chunks varies across Portugal, what intonation
patterns are used in the different regions, or whether speech rhythm
contributes to regional varieties remain to be answered. Research on
prosodic variation is of central interest to language typologies, to
grammatical studies (syntax-prosody and morphology-prosody interfaces), to
speech and language processing, to language development, to language
pathology, or to speech technologies. CLUL is engaged in developing this
area of research, by addressing prosodic variation within a program of
international scope that proposes a system for prosodic transcription and
labeling of speech corpora, together with a set of methodological
procedures that enable cross-linguistic work on prosodic variation in
language.

CLUL offers a postdoc position in Phonology, Phonetics and Language
Variation. The researcher will set up a project conducing to an Interactive
Atlas of European Portuguese Prosody and Intonation, freely accessed
online. Data collection for prosody and intonation survey will follow the
procedures established in recent similar projects for other European
languages (such as British English or Catalan). Data processing will make
available new resources for further in-depth studies of Portuguese prosody
and related applications. The researcher will be actively collaborating
with the members of the research team committed to the study of prosody,
and involved in the supervision of Masters and PhD students.

Applicants should have a strong commitment to internationally-recognized
research and demonstrated capacities as an independent researcher,
especially in the form of journal publications. The successful candidate
should have a background in the phonetics and phonology of prosody.
Experience with tonal labeling (ToBI) is welcome. Some knowledge of
Portuguese is desirable, but not required.

Applications should include a letter of motivation, a curriculum vitae,
copies of degree certificates, copy of an identification document, a
minimum of two letters of recommendation or two contacts of qualified
specialists who may recommend the candidate. Please send two publications
plus PhD dissertation. E-mail applications should be sent in PDF, DOC or
RTF format.

Application Deadline: 08-Sep-2008
Mailing Address for Applications:
Centro de Linguística Universidade de Lisboa
Av. Prof. Gama Pinto, 2
Lisboa 1649-003
Portugal
Email Address for Applications: directiva@clul.ul.pt
Contact Information:
Sonia Frota
Email: sonia.frota@mail.telelpac.pt