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<div style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-size: 14px;">1
Postdoctoral position in Automatic Discourse Processing<br>
</b></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Saarland
University, Saarbruecken, Germany</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Deadline
for Applications:<b> 13 Oct 2014</b></span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: 14px;">The DFG-funded CRC Information
Density and Linguistic Encoding (SFB 1102) is pleased to
invite applications for a post-doctoral position within the
project "Cognitive Modelling of Information Density for
Discourse Relations", start date as soon as possible.
Applications will be considered as soon as they come in,
applications before Oct 13th will be given full consideration.<br>
</span><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-size:
14px;"><br>
</span><b>Postdoctoral researcher: computational linguist or
computer scientist</b><b><br>
</b><br>
The focus of the work programme of the postdoctoral researcher
is on automatic discourse relation identification, from a
cognitive perspective. The goal is to build a model of human
discourse relation expectations and inference, based on an
incremental discourse parser which can generate surprisal
estimates over discourse relations at any point in the text.
That is, the project is taking an information-theoretic
perspective on human language processing, asking how much
information is conveyed by each word in a text with respect to
the discourse relations present in a text. <br>
<br>
Responsibilities include using machine learning methods for
obtaining accurate estimates of the discourse relations which
may be expected given contextual cues, and implementing the
incremental discourse relation surprisal model. Depending on
interests, the postdoctoral researcher on this project may
also get involved in experimental studies related to
linguistic cues that are important for human discourse
relation inference, as well as studies that try to establish
the psycholinguistic reality of discourse relations, and
estimate cognitively meaningful similarities between the
different discourse relations. <br>
<br>
Requirements: The candidate should have a doctoral degree (by
the starting date of the position) in computational
linguistics, computer science or a related discipline, and
should have extensive experience in using machine learning for
NLP problems. An interest in taking a psycholinguistic
perspective is desired. The applicant must have good spoken
and written proficiency in English.<br>
<br>
For further information on the project, see <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.sfb1102.uni-saarland.de/b2.php">http://www.sfb1102.uni-saarland.de/b2.php</a></span><span
style="font-size: 14px;"><br>
<br>
<br>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;">Saarland University is a leading
centre for language research and offers a dynamic and
stimulating environment. The new Collaborative Research Center
“Information Density and Linguistic Encoding”, which the open
positions are part of, supports a broad range of experimental,
corpus-based, and cognitive modelling research activities, with
over 40 staff. <br>
Saarland University also has large established groups working on
computational linguistics and psycholinguistics (</span><span
style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/groups/MC/">http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de</a></span>),
as well as the</span><span style="font-size: 14px;"> Cluster of
Excellence "Multi-modal Computing and Interaction" (<a
href="http://www.mmci.uni-saarland.de/">http://www.mmci.uni-saarland.de/</a>),
which was formed in partnership with top-ranked research
institutions located on the Saarland University campus: Max
Planck Institute for Informatics, Max Planck Institute for
Software Systems, the German Research Centre for Artificial
Intelligence (DFKI), and the Computer Science Department at
Saarland University. Researchers come from all over the world,
and the primary research language is English. <br>
The Department is committed to excellence in teaching, offering
an international MSc program in "Language Science and
Technology" (taught in English), and well as a BSc in
"Computational Linguistics".</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br>
</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: 14px;">The appointments will be made on
the German TV-L E13 scale (100% position for postdoctoral
researcher; see also <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.sfb1102.uni-saarland.de/jobs.php">http://www.sfb1102.uni-saarland.de/jobs.php</a>).
Support for travel to conferences is also available. <b>Priority
will be given to applications received by October 13, 2014</b>.
Any inquiries concerning the post should be directed to the
e-mail address below. <br>
Complete applications including: (1) a statement of research
interests motivating why you are applying for this position,
(2) a full CV with publications, (3) scans of transcripts and
academic degree certificates, and (4) the names and e-mail
addresses of three referees, should be e-mailed as a single PDF
to:</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br>
Dr. Vera Demberg<br>
e-mail: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:vera@coli.uni-saarland.de">vera@coli.uni-saarland.de</a><br>
Tel. +49 (0)681 302-70024</span></div>
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