26.2083, Support: Gallo; Morphology, Semantics, Sociolinguistics, Syntax / France

Sat Apr 18 21:35:02 UTC 2015

LINGUIST List: Vol-26-2083. Sat Apr 18 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.2083, Support: Gallo; Morphology, Semantics, Sociolinguistics, Syntax / France

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Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2015 17:31:21
From: Nicolas Guilliot [nicolas.guilliot at univ-nantes.fr]
Subject: Gallo; Morphology, Semantics, Sociolinguistics, Syntax: PhD Student, University of Nantes - LLING, France

 Institution/Organization: University of Nantes - LLING 
Department: Language Sciences - LLING 
Web Address: http://www.lling.univ-nantes.fr/ 

Level: PhD 

Duties: Research

Specialty Areas: Morphology; Semantics; Sociolinguistics; Syntax 

Required Language(s): French (fra)

                      Romance 

Description:

Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes (LLING) at University of Nantes, France invites applications for PhD position granted by the Region Pays de la Loire, France Research Lab in Linguistics (LLing EA3827) / University of Nantes, France.

PhD supervised by Hamida Demirdache (Professor), and Nicolas Guilliot (MCF)
Duration: 3 years, September 2015 - August 2018.
Title: Negation, polarity and negative concord in Gallo: description, morphosyntactic and semantic analysis

The PhD project is related to the description and formal analysis of Gallo, a minority Romance dialect / language belonging to the regional cultural heritage, but whose linguistic analysis is poorly developed, especially in formal linguistics. The topic of the PhD project concerns morphological, syntactic and semantic aspects of negation and polarity in Gallo.

Project Details:
Previous work on the topic has been developed in 2010, which suggests that Gallo exhibits negative concord in particular way (different from Standard French): sentences like « y'a pas personn qu'est v'nu » (lit: there is not nobody that came) or « J'ae pas veû ren » (lit: I have not seen nothing) (Précis de Grammaire Gallèse, 2009) respectively mean that ''nobody came'' and ''I didn't see anything''. The first goal of the PhD will be to develop fieldwork based on questionnaires related to translation and grammaticality judgment tasks. This data collection will specifically target negative words (and/or related to negative concord) in Gallo (ren, personn,...), and also polarity items, which are claimed to be sensitive to negation (équivalent to qui/quoi que ce soit or anybody). The second and main goal of the PhD will be to build on the collected data to develop a formal analysis following the Generative framework. Crucially indeed, negative concord and polarity still raise im
 portant questions with respect to the formal analysis of negative words, polarity items, and more generally indefinites across languages, and a deep study of these phenomena in Gallo should be useful to confirm or argue against various linguistic analyses proposed in the literature (see Corblin et al 2004, Déprez 2003, or Herburger 2001). Bibliography:
- Corblin F., Déprez V., de Swart H. & L. Tovena, (2004). « Negative Concord », dans Francis Corblin & Henriëtte de Swart (eds.) Handbook of French Semantics, CSLI Publications.
- Déprez V. (2003) « Concordance négative, syntaxe des mots-N et variation dialectale » Cahiers de Linguistique Française 25 : 97-118. Faculté des Lettres. Université de Genève.
- Herburger E. (2001) « The negative concord puzzle revisited », dans Natural Language Semantics 9:289-333.
- Précis de Grammaire Gallèse (2009), Manuscrit (association des enseignants du gallo).

Requirements:
The orientation of the PhD position clearly requires theoretical insight, competence in fieldwork, and a high expertise in formal linguistics, preferably in the generative framework. The candidate should be able to use techniques for data collection in experimental situations (induced production, grammaticality judgment tasks). 
He or she should demonstrate required knowledge in formal syntax and semantics to guarantee that the questions asked and answers provided are grounded on a strong theoretical contextualization in formal linguistics. The application, transmitted to all members of the jury will be evaluated, with specific attention to grades / ranking of the Masters degree, and to evidence for a strong knowledge in both theoretical and formal linguistics.

How to Apply:
The application should be addressed before May 15, 2015 to Nicolas Guilliot at the following e-mail address: nicolas.guilliot at univ-nantes.fr
It should contain:
- curriculum vitae (CV);
- project or cover letter;
- academic transcript of the Master in Linguistics of Language Sciences (with grades and ranking). 

Application Deadline: 15-May-2015 

Mailing Address for Applications:
	Attn: M. Nicolas Guilliot 
	Département Sciences du Langage 
	Chemin de la Censive du Tertre, BP81227 
	Nantes 44312 
	France 

Contact Information: 
	M. Nicolas Guilliot 
	nicolas.guilliot at univ-nantes.fr  

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