[An-lang] PhD Opportunity: Multimodal Expression of Caused Motion

[Anna Margetts]

Dear colleagues,


We are calling for expressions of interest for conducting PhD research in
conjunction with the Australian Research Council Discovery Project *Where
Gesture Meets Grammar: Crosslinguistic Multimodal Communication *(
DP240102369 <https://dataportal.arc.gov.au/NCGP/Web/Grant/Grant/DP240102369>)
based at Monash University in Melbourne.



We would appreciate it if you could distribute this among your networks.


Thanks!

Anna


*The ARC Discovery Project*

The project examines diversity and universality in co-speech gesture,
focussing on how speakers of different languages communicate events.
Although we know much about diversity and universals across human
languages, the diversity of co-speech gesture across cultures and social
contexts has only recently been studied systematically (Kita 2009).

In order to investigate how grammatical structure, lexical semantics and
politeness conventions shape iconic gestures across languages, we focus on
descriptions of caused motion (e.g., “My mother took my grandfather to the
airport”, “He put the cake in the oven”). Caused motion events are central
to human experience and are conceptually complex. Their expression is
sensitive to social relationships and shows remarkable diversity across
languages (Gullberg 2011, Furman 2012, Furman, Küntay & Özyürek. 2014,
Kopeka & Narasimhan 2012, Hellwig et al. 2022, Margetts et al. 2022),
making this domain ideal for the cross-linguistic investigation of gesture.

The project compares co-speech gesture in four languages: Australian
English, Korean, Saliba-Loega (an Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea),
and Burarra (a non-Pama–Nyungan language of northern Australia). It
investigates how speakers distribute semantic content across speech and
gesture; especially whether these two modalities express the same/different
content, reflecting cross-linguistic differences in lexicalisation and
syntactic packaging of information (Kita & Özyürek, 2003, Gullberg &
Narasimhan, 2010). We also explore how these gestures vary according to the
social status of event participants and/or speech-act participants (Brown,
Kim, Hübscher, Winter 2022).


*The PhD Project*

We are seeking expressions of interest from outstanding student researchers
to conduct a PhD project on the expression of caused motion events in
additional languages, or potentially on specialised topics in one of the
project languages. Projects could be based on interactional corpus data or
experimental designs. We envisage the PhD project to be an in-depth study
of one language but comparative/crosslinguistic topics will also be
considered.

PhD projects would be supervised by at least one of the chief
investigators, Anna Margetts, Lucien Brown, and Jill Vaughan, and could be
cosupervised by colleagues in the
<https://www.monash.edu/arts/languages-literatures-cultures-linguistics>*School
of Language, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics
<https://www.monash.edu/arts/languages-literatures-cultures-linguistics>*
at Monash University. Projects may also be cosupervised by partner
investigator Sotaro Kita at the University of Warwick, especially in the
case of a *Monash-Warwick Alliance Joint PhD
<https://www.monash.edu/graduate-research/programs-industry/research-degrees/joint-research-awards/university-of-warwick-joint-award>*.
Applications are invited from both Australia and overseas.

Applicants should have a strong background in one or more of the following
areas: linguistic typology, gesture, multimodality of communication,
non-Indo-European languages, working with media data in ELAN, corpus
linguistics, interactional linguistics.


*Scholarships*

Candidates will apply to the *Monash PhD scholarships
<https://www.monash.edu/arts/graduate_research/how-to-apply/scholarships>*
or the
<https://www.monash.edu/graduate-research/programs-industry/research-degrees/joint-research-awards/university-of-warwick-joint-award>*Monash-Warwick
Alliance joint PhD
<https://www.monash.edu/graduate-research/programs-industry/research-degrees/joint-research-awards/university-of-warwick-joint-award>*.
These scholarships are competitive.

Applications for the
<https://www.monash.edu/study/courses/find-a-course/arts-research-training-a7001?international=true>*Master
of Arts (Research Training)
<https://www.monash.edu/study/courses/find-a-course/arts-research-training-a7001?international=true>*
or the <https://www.monash.edu/study/courses/find-a-course/arts-2695>*Master
of Arts <https://www.monash.edu/study/courses/find-a-course/arts-2695>* can
also be considered, however, scholarship opportunities are more limited.

Please note the entry requirements for admission to the
<https://www.monash.edu/graduate-research/study/apply/admission-criteria>*PhD
or Master of Arts
<https://www.monash.edu/graduate-research/study/apply/admission-criteria>*
and for the
<https://www.monash.edu/study/courses/find-a-course/arts-research-training-a7001#entry-requirements-2>*Master
of Arts (Research Training)
<https://www.monash.edu/study/courses/find-a-course/arts-research-training-a7001#entry-requirements-2>*
at Monash University.


*Submitting an expression of interest*

Please send your initial expression of interest *by 31st May* including:

●      Your research proposal around the linguistic expression of caused
motion events following these
<https://www.monash.edu/arts/guidelines>*guidelines
<https://www.monash.edu/arts/guidelines>*.

●      CV

●      Names of referees

*Please do not apply directly for a Monash scholarship at this stage*. We
need to vet the suitability and scholarship potential for each proposal as
well as supervisor availability before candidates submit an official
application.

Send your expression of interest with the subject *Caused Motion PhD
enquiry* to the project team at *anna.margetts at monash.edu
<anna.margetts at monash.edu>*.


*References*

Brown, L., H. Kim, I. Hübscher, & B. Winter. 2022. Gestures are modulated
by social context: A study of multimodal politeness across two cultures.
*Gesture* 21(2-3), 167-200.

Furman, R. 2012. *Caused motion events in Turkish: Verbal and gestural
representation in adults and children*. Radboud University Nijmegen/LOT
Doctoral dissertation.

Furman, R., A. C. Küntay & A. Özyürek. 2014. Early language-specificity of
children’s event encoding in speech and gesture: Evidence from caused
motion in Turkish. *Language, Cognition and Neuroscience* 29(5), 620-634.

Gullberg, M. 2011. Language-specific encoding of placement events in
gestures. In J. Bohnemeyer & E. Pederson (eds.), *Event representation in
language and cognition.* Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 166–188.

Gullberg, Marianne & Bhuvana Narasimhan. 2010. What gestures reveal about
how semantic distinctions develop in Dutch children’s placement verbs.
Cognitive Linguistics 21(2). 239–262.

Hellwig, B, A. Margetts, S. Riesberg & M. Schippling. 2022. Bringing and
taking: a cross-linguistic perspective on caused accompanied motion events.
In A. Margetts, S. Riesberg & B. Hellwig (eds.), Caused accompanied motion:
Bringing and taking events in a cross-linguistic perspective (Typological
Studies in Language 134), 1–41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Kita, S. (2009). Cross-cultural variation of speech-accompanying gesture: A
review. *Language and cognitive processes*, *24*(2), 145-167.

Kita, S., & Özyürek, A. (2003). What does cross-linguistic variation in
semantic coordination of speech and gesture reveal?: Evidence for an
interface representation of spatial thinking and speaking. *Journal of
Memory and language*, *48*(1), 16-32.

Kopecka, A., & Narasimhan, B. (Eds.) (2012). Events of putting and taking:
A crosslinguistic perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Margetts, A., Haude, K., Himmelmann, N. P., Jung, D., Riesberg, S.,
Schnell, S., Seifart, F., Sheppard, H., & Wegener, C. (2022). Cross-linguistic
patterns in the lexicalisation of *bring* and *take*. *Studies in Language.*
*46*(4), 934-993.
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