[Corpora-List] 1 year Post-doc/Post-graduate position - Verb Semantics - University of Firenze

[Andrew Williams]

Title: Bootstrapping semantic information from BNC spoken for the
setting up of the IMAGACT ontology


The LABLITA-LAB at the Italian Department of the University of Florence,
Italy is developing a cross-linguistic ontology of action concepts
referred to by high frequency verbs, performed in the frame of the
coordinated IMAGACT project. The overall objective is to provide
annotation of verb occurrences in spoken corpora that are relevant
to the Cross-linguistic Ontology of action, and derive a semantic/visual
mapping between the different languages. Current work is on the spoken
BNC for English and C-ORAL-ROM for Italian.

The position foresees the processing of around 30,000 verb occurrences
in the corpus by a native English speaker and the selection and
annotation of roughly 40% of those occurrences which actually refer
to action.

IMAGACT will provide the spec. and (web) annotation infrastructure to
perform the work.


The work is divided into the following subtasks:
1. Corpus based work
- Bootstrapping of equivalent classes of action concepts extended by a
set of high frequency action verbs in a selection of the spoken BNC
- parallel negative selection of occurrences not referring to action
- Validation of action classes as regards total occurrences/best examples
- Semantic annotation of action types so derived from corpus annotation
- Cross-linking with Italian semantic equivalents

2. Contribution to the Cross-linguistic ontology
- Negotiation with a supervisor of prototypical images representing action
types


Requirements:
Master or PhD in Linguistics, Computational linguistics or Computer Science
Native/Mother Tongue English Speaker
Basic skills in Semantics and logical thought

The presence in Florence can be negotiated and is strictly required only
for the initial training and for periodical verification meetings.
Italian knowledge is not strictly necessary; it is enough to be in the
spirit to interact with Italians.
To be accepted candidates should prove their understanding of the project
framework and their capacity to apply the concepts in the annotation task.
To this end a brief tutorial with an annotation test is foreseen (on
site or through Skype video-conference).

Deadline for application: Open until filled


Please send enquiries or applications along with a CV to
Prof. Massimo Moneglia (moneglia at unifi.it)


Further information on the project and lab at:
http://lablita.dit.unifi.it/projects/IMAGACT
http://lablita.dit.unifi.it


--
Andrew Williams
LABLITA
Italian Department (DIPITA)
University of Florence
Piazza Savonarola, 1
50132 Florence, Italy
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