[Lingtyp] PostDoc positions in cross-linguistic corpus project Berlin and Lyon

[Frank Seifart]

Dear colleagues,

We're offering two PostDocs positions, one in Berlin and one in Lyon, in 
our DFG-ANR "DoReCo" project. The announcement for the job in Berlin 
(corpus building and phonetics) can be found at 
http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/fileadmin/material/jobs/Doreco_Postdoc_Job_announcement.pdf, 
the one for Lyon (corpus building and information rates) can be found at 
http://bit.ly/2RgAdXZ. Below, I paste further information on the project 
as a whole.

The deadline for applications for the position in Berlin is January 20, 
the deadline for the one in Lyon is January 28, both are open until 
filled. Please distribute these exciting possibilities widely in your 
networks and encourage candidates to apply and to contact me directly 
(or Manfred Krifka, for the PostDoc position in Berlin) should any 
questions arise.

Best wishes,

Frank

Project title: Cross-linguistic phonetics and morphology using a 
time-aligned multilingual reference corpus built from documentations of 
50 languages: Big data on small languages (DoReCo)

PIs: Frank Seifart (CNRS-DDL, Lyon) & Manfred Krifka (ZAS, Berlin)

Abstract: Speech rate and pauses provide us with a window into the 
cognitive-neural and physiological-articulatory basesof the human 
language production system, but cross-linguistic variation in this 
domain remain understudied. This project fills this gap by comparative 
studies of spontaneously spoken language in a diverse sample of 50 
languages. For this purpose, we create a multilingual reference corpus 
of language documentation data (DoReCo) consisting of annotations and 
associated audio recordings that are archived at repositories such as 
The Language Archive (TLA), especially from the DOBES collection. DoReCo 
will be built from data that are already transcribed, translated into a 
major language, and time-aligned at the level of discourse units with 
audio files. Within the current project, these data will be time-aligned 
at the phoneme level. We have identified at least 50 languages, from 
which corpora of at least 10,000 words can be included in DoReCo, and a 
subset of at least 30 of these, which are additionally already annotated 
for morpheme breaks and morpheme glosses. In DoReCo, subcorpora and 
annotations are treated as citable publications, provided with a 
permanent identifier and associated with a CC BY 4.0 license. DoReCo 
will have a lasting effect beyond the specific research goals of the 
DoReCo project, as a platform for easy access to over one million words 
of annotated corpus data from over 50 languages for cross-linguistic 
research on spoken language. This represents an unprecedented 
contribution to open, reproducible science regarding global linguistic 
diversity and cultural heritage. Both of DoReCo’s two specific research 
goals address the universality of constraints on human language arising 
from species-wide articulatory and cognitive properties: Firstly [in 
Berlin], we investigate patterns of phonetic lengthening with the aim 
towards establishing universal vs. language-specific patterns in (i) the 
degree to which different types of phonological segments undergo 
variation in duration (e.g. vowels vs. different types of consonants) – 
reflecting articulatory and perceptual constraints – and (ii) word-final 
lengthening as indicative of major vs. minor prosodic boundaries – 
reflecting cognitive constraints on planning and potentially signalling 
discourse units. Secondly [in Lyon], we investigate universal vs. 
language-specific patterns in the temporal distribution of morphemes 
regarding (i) information rate in terms of morphemes per second and (ii) 
the number of morphemes in inter-pausal units – both reflecting 
cognitive constraints on language use. The project will be carried out 
by an interdisciplinary team bringing together expertise on documentary 
linguistics, phonetics, typology, and quantitative linguistics, with 
strong institutional support from two leading research centres in 
Germany and France.