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<TITLE>Job Opportunity: Research Fellow in the Surrey Morphology Group (Alor-Pantar Languages) - Ref 7108</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>[With apologies for cross-postings – Advertisement and Role Description attached]<BR>
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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><FONT COLOR="#800000"><B>University of Surrey<BR>
Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences<BR>
Surrey Morphology Group<BR>
</B></FONT></SPAN></FONT><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><FONT COLOR="#800000"><B><FONT FACE="Times, Times New Roman">Department of English <BR>
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Research Fellow - ref 7108 <BR>
<B>Salary from £28,839 to £32,458 per annum <BR>
(depending on experience) <BR>
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Applications are invited for a research post in the Surrey Morphology Group, for three years, available from 1 October 2009. This post is for the project ‘</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">Alor and Pantar Languages: Origins and Theoretical Impacts</FONT><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of European Science Foundation’s EuroBABEL scheme, and involves coordinated projects in Surrey, Leiden and Fairbanks (Alaska). The Surrey project directors are Professor Greville Corbett, Dr Matthew Baerman and Dr Dunstan Brown. <BR>
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The job will involve working collaboratively with linguists gathering data in the field on constructing a typology of word classes and morphosyntactic categories in the Alor-Pantar languages, maintaining a database and contributing to joint papers. Some fieldwork in conjunction with the collaborating project teams is also foreseen.<BR>
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Applicants should have Ph.D. in hand or expect to complete all requirements for the Ph.D. prior to appointment. Applicants should have a solid background in one or more of the following areas: linguistic typology, morphological theory, and the languages of New Guinea and/or Indonesia. Candidates must have the ability to work independently while functioning as part of a research team. <BR>
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<B>The Project<BR>
</B>The Alor-Pantar (AP) languages are a group of 15-20 non-Austronesian (‘Papuan’) languages spoken on several islands in eastern Indonesia. They are of special interest because they have no established genetic relatives. A relationship to the Trans New Guinea family has been proposed, but remains highly disputed, due to the lack of language documentation. Documentation of these languages has recently begun, but the material has yet to be analyzed in a rigorous fashion, and the theoretical linguistic community is largely unaware of these data. The implications for language classification, migration patterns, and morphosyntactic and semantic typology remain largely unexplored. <BR>
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The project aims to document and analyze the AP languages, collecting high quality archival data to deepen our understanding of human language. It is divided into three Individual Projects: Extended Documentation (Leiden), Word Class Typology (Surrey) and Linguistic Prehistory (Fairbanks). The aims of the Surrey project are to investigate (i) the continuum between word classes and grammatical features; (ii) how morphosyntactic categories evolve from diffuse pragmatic and syntactic conditions; (iii) several particularly unusual morphosyntactic phenomena of the AP languages.<BR>
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Now is a crucial time for this work: the AP languages are severely endangered but still have sufficient vitality to provide additional supporting documentation without difficulty. The quality of AP language data is likely to decline significantly over the next two decades as language shift progresses.<BR>
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Details about the EuroBABEL project can be found at:<BR>
<a href="http://www.alor-pantar.org/">http://www.alor-pantar.org/</a><BR>
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Details of the Surrey Morphology Group can be found at:<BR>
<a href="http://www.surrey.ac.uk/LIS/SMG/">http://www.surrey.ac.uk/LIS/SMG/</a><BR>
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Informal enquiries may be made to Dr Matthew Baerman (m.baerman@surrey.ac.uk) or to Dr Dunstan Brown (d.brown@surrey.ac.uk).<BR>
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</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">To apply on line, please visit www.surrey.ac.uk/vacancies <a href="http://www.surrey.ac.uk/vacancies"><http://www.surrey.ac.uk/vacancies></a> . Alternatively please contact Louise Ellesley via email on l.ellesley@surrey.ac.uk or by telephone on 01483 689646 quoting reference number 7108. To send an application, please post to Louise Ellesley, HR Assistant, Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH.<BR>
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</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">Closing date for applications: 10th August 2009<BR>
Provisional date for Interview board: 28th August 2009<BR>
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<I>The University is committed to an Equal Opportunities Policy</I></FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><BR>
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