PhD studentships in Manchester, UK

[Danielle Matthews]

PhD. studentships for the study of language development

Applications are invited for up to two funded Ph.D. studentships.  The students
will be attached to the Max Planck Child Study Centre and registered for a
Ph.D. in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Manchester. 
The Child Study Centre is run by Professor Elena Lieven and is funded by the
Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, directed by Professor
Michael Tomasello, at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology,
Leipzig, Germany.  Supervision of PhD students is done by Professors Lieven and
Tomasello with other staff in the School of Psychological Sciences
co-supervising.

Research in the Centre focuses on the development of language (especially
grammar) and consists in the collection and analysis of naturalistic and
experimental data for children learning English and other languages.

You must have or expect to attain next summer, a good honours degree in
Psychology, Linguistics or an associated discipline.

Funding will consist of approximately 1250 Euros per month plus support for
travel and equipment.  The Home/EC rate for fees will be paid by the MPI.

Please apply by sending a detailed CV and covering letter to:
Mrs Mickie Glover
Max Planck Child Study Centre
School of Psychological Sciences
University of Manchester
M13 9PL
U.K.
(email: mickie.glover at manchester.ac.uk, tel: 0161 445 2351)


Completed applications must reach us by Monday February 20th 2006 at the latest.
Enquiries can be made by email to Professors Lieven or Tomasello at the MPI for
Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103, Leipzig, Germany.
(lieven at eva.mpg.de or tomasello at eva.mpg.de).
Relevant websites are:
www.eva.mpg.de
www.psych-sci.manchester.ac.uk/research/groups/languageandcommunication/maxplanck/


Further details for Max Planck PhD studentships

Background

The Manchester Max Planck Child Study Centre is funded by the Max Planck
Society, a German research foundation, with support from the School of
Psychological Sciences at the University of Manchester. The Centre is directed
by Professor Elena Lieven and forms part of the Department of Comparative and
Developmental Psychology, directed by Professor Michael Tomasello, at the Max
Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.

The research of the staff and students who work at the Manchester Child Study
Centre is concerned with children's early language acquisition. This is studied
through the analysis of both naturalistic and experimental data.  Our focus is
on children learning English and German although we have ongoing studies of
Polish, French, Russian and Finnish.

Naturalistic Studies

Ongoing involves tracking the sources of children's developing constructions,
including the transitives, questions and complex sentences. This is done
through analyzing children's own prior speech and that of their caregivers.
As well as using the Manchester corpus, available on the CHILDES database, we
are also developing denser corpora. These corpora contain recordings of
children taped for between 5 - 10 hours per week. This far better sampling
rate allows for in depth analyses, which have never previously been possible.


 Experimental Studies

Experimental studies focus on a number of aspects of language acquisition, such
as the development of general syntactic categories (such as noun and verb) and
constructions (such as transitives and questions). We also look at how children
learn to use pragmatically appropriate language (for example, using appropriate
referring expressions). A number of different methodologies are used including
priming, act out tasks, preferential looking and training studies. Experiments
often employ novel or low frequency words to determine children's ability to
extend their knowledge of language to words with which they are less familiar.

The studentship(s)

1 or 2 studentships are available to start the academic year of 2006/7.
There is a six month probationary period and renewal takes place after review,
each year, for three years.
In the first instance, please apply by sending a detailed CV and covering letter
to:
Mrs Mickie Glover
Max Planck Child Study Centre
School of Psychological Sciences
University of Manchester
M13 9PL
U.K.
(email: mickie.glover at manchester.ac.uk, tel: 0161 445 2351)

------------------------------------------
Dr Danielle Matthews
Max Planck Child Study Centre Co-ordinator
School of Psychological Sciences
The University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester
M13 9PL
U.K.
Tel: 44 (0)161 275 2594
Email: danielle.mattthews at manchester.ac.uk
Web: http://www.psych-sci.manchester.ac.uk/staff/84838