27.2996, Jobs: Language Acquisition; Multilingualism; Language Attrition: Post Doc, University of Tromsø

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LINGUIST List: Vol-27-2996. Tue Jul 19 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.2996, Jobs: Language Acquisition; Multilingualism; Language Attrition: Post Doc, University of Tromsø

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Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2016 21:38:38
From: Marit Westergaard [marit.westergaard at uit.no]
Subject: Language Acquisition; Multilingualism; Language Attrition: Post Doc, University of Tromsø, Norway

 
University or Organization: University of Tromsø - The Arctic University of Norway 
Department: Department of Language and Culture
Job Location: Tromsø, Norway 
Job Title: Postdoc
Job Rank: Post Doc

Specialty Areas: Language Acquisition; Multilingualism, Language Attrition


Description:

Two Postdoc/Researcher positions are available in the Department of Language
and Culture at the University of Tromsø - The Arctic University of Norway, for
a period of 3 years. The positions are affiliated with the LAVA research group
(Language Acquisition, Variation & Attrition) and are connected to the project
MiMS (Micro-variation in Multilingual Acquisition & Attrition Situations).

LAVA is an active and productive research group. For further information, see
http://site.uit.no/lava/

The MiMS project has recently received funding (NOK 9 million) from the
Research Council of Norway. The two advertised researcher/postdoc positions
will give the successful candidates the opportunity to work closely with an
outstanding team of linguists. The PI is Professor Marit Westergaard. For
further information about the MiMS project, see:
http://site.uit.no/lava/micro-variation-in-multilingual-acquisition-attrition-
situations-mims/

The acquisition research group at UiT has worked on monolingual language
acquisition for a number of years, focusing on linguistic phenomena where
there is variation in the input. In recent years, there has been increased
focus on variation in a bilingual/multilingual perspective. The work of the
LAVA group has a theoretical foundation and the focus is on the mental
grammars of various populations of speakers. The object of study is syntactic
microvariation and the importance of factors such as complexity, frequency or
economy in the acquisition process and in heritage language situations. The
research methodology includes corpora and different types of experimental work
(production experiments, eyetracking). 

Brief project description (MiMS): Children clearly learn language from the
ambient input, but not from input alone. One of the main questions in
theoretical linguistics and language acquisition is how much is provided by an
innate endowment and how much must be learned from the primary linguistic
data. The MiMS project addresses this central issue within a new approach to
language acquisition and attrition, the micro-cue model (MCM) that the PI has
developed in a number of recent publications, based on data from monolingual
acquisition. The MiMS project will extend this approach to multilingual
situations. The focus is on (morpho-)syntactic microvariation in Norwegian,
Russian, German and English, related to word order and certain aspects of
nominal structure. The languages/syntactic constructions are chosen as they
represent an interesting combination of challenges, both for children
acquiring and adults maintaining these systems in multilingual contexts.
According to the MCM, acquisition and change take place in small steps. By
identifying these steps (micro-cues), the project will increase our
understanding of the building blocks of language. It will also investigate the
effect of more general factors such as complexity, frequency and economy in
the acquisition and attrition processes.

Qualification requirements:

- A PhD in Linguistics or another relevant field
- Experience with experimental methods in language acquisition
- Native or near-native proficiency in Russian and/or Norwegian will be
preferred
- Excellent command of spoken and written English

Applicants must provide a research proposal (3-5 pages), stating how they will
contribute to the work in the MiMS project. 

The application must be submitted electronically via the application form
available at the application URL below.



Application Deadline: 01-Sep-2016 
	  
Web Address for Applications: https://goo.gl/Cbei6a 
Contact Information:
	Professor Marit Westergaard 
	Email: marit.westergaard at uit.no 


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