PhD scholarships at RCLT, La Trobe University, Melbourne

[Alexandra Aikhenvald]

PhD scholarships in grammatical description

 

The Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, invites applications from suitably qualified students to enter the PhD program.

 

Our PhD candidates generally undertake extensive fieldwork on a previously undescribed (or scarcely described) language and write a comprehensive grammar of it for their dissertation.  We prefer students to work on a language which is still actively spoken, and to establish a field situation within a community in which it is the first language.  Fieldwork methodology should be centred on the collection, transcription and analysis of texts, together with participant observation, and - at a later stage - judicious grammatical elicitation in the language under description (not through the lingua franca of the country). Our main priority areas are the languages of Amazonia and the Papuan and Austronesian languages of New Guinea.  We also welcome applications to work on indigenous languages from other areas such as the Aslian language group from Malaysia and the Aboriginal languages of Australia.

 

PhDs in Australian universities generally involve no coursework, just a substantial dissertation. Candidates must thus have had a thorough coursework training before embarking on this PhD program.  This should have included courses on morphology, syntax, semantics, phonology/phonetics and comparative-historical linguistics, taught from a non-formalist perspective. We place emphasis on work that has a sound empirical basis but also shows a firm theoretical orientation (in terms of general typological theory, or what has recently come to be called basic linguistic theory). 

 

The Research Centre for Linguistic Typology consists, at any one time, of about twenty scholars, working on a variety of languages and typological issues.  Besides the permanent staff of Professor R M W Dixon (Director) and Professor Alexandra Y Aikhenvald (Associate Director) we have an array of Research Fellows and PhD students; each year a number of senior scholars from across the world spend from three to six months with us as Visiting Fellows. Our personnel this year includes specialists on spoken languages from the following families or areas: Tsimshian, Mayan, Oto-Manguean, Eskimo-Aleut, Arawak, Carib, Arawá, Panaoan, Jívaro, Tacanan, Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Chukchee, Afro-asiatic, Khoisan, Tai-Kadai, Tibeto-Burman, Austro-asiatic, Papuan, Austronesian and Australian.

 

There is also an excellent Department of Linguistics in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University, whose faculty includes Professor Randy LaPolla, Associate Professor David Bradley, and Dr Hilary Chappell. And there are fine Departments of Linguistics at the University of Melbourne and at Monash University. 

 

The scholarship will be at the standard La Trobe University rate, Australian $17,500 p.a.  Students coming from overseas are liable for a visa fee (effectively, a tuition fee); we will pay this. A small relocation allowance may be provided on taking up the scholarship. In addition, an appropriate allowance will be made to cover fieldwork expenses. The scholarship is for three years.

 

Further information about RCLT is at our website: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/rclt. 

See, in particular, our February 2004 Newsletter, available on this web site.

 

Prospective applicants are invited to get in touch with Professor Aikhenvald at a.aikhenvald at latrobe.edu.au, providing details of their background, qualifications and interests. 

 

 

 

 

====================================

Professor Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, FAHA

Associate Director

Research Centre for Linguistic Typology

Institute for Advanced Study

La Trobe University

Victoria 3086

Australia

 

ph: +61-3-9479 6402 University

      +61-3-9467 3079 University

      +61-3-9455 0020  Home

 

Fax: +61-3-9467 3053

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20040618/d133e4c2/attachment.htm>