26.3095, Support: Russian; Computational Linguistics; General Linguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics / Norway

[The LINGUIST List via LINGUIST]

LINGUIST List: Vol-26-3095. Wed Jul 01 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.3095, Support: Russian; Computational Linguistics; General Linguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics / Norway

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Date: Wed, 01 Jul 2015 13:06:43
From: Laura A. Janda [laura.janda at uit.no]
Subject: Russian; Computational Linguistics; General Linguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics, PhD, University of Tromsø - The Arctic University of Norway, Norway

 Institution/Organization: University of Tromsø - The Arctic University of Norway 
Department: Department of Language and Linguistics 
Web Address: http://goo.gl/PL39vD 

Level: PhD 

Duties: Research
 
Specialty Areas: Computational Linguistics; General Linguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics 
 
Required Language(s): Russian (rus)

Description:

One Doctoral Research Fellowship (PhD) in Language Technology and Russian Linguistics is available in the Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Tromsø - The Arctic University of Norway (UiT). The position is affiliated with the CLEAR (Cognitive Linguistics: Empirical Approaches to Russian) and Giellatekno (Center for Saami Language Technology) research groups.
 
The appointment is a fixed term position for a period of four years. 
 
The purpose of the PhD Research Fellowship is research training leading to the successful completion of a doctoral degree. Admission to a PhD program is a prerequisite for employment, and the program period starts on commencement of the position. The candidate will be affiliated with the Faculty's organized research training, and the academic work must result in a doctoral thesis aiming to obtain the degree of PhD within the period of employment.
 
The successful candidate must meet the requirements for admission to the Faculty's PhD program, cf. § 6 of UiT PhD regulations. Moreover, the applicant must prove English language proficiency equivalent to the standards of Norwegian Higher Education Entrance Qualification. Information about the application process for admission to the PhD programme, application form and regulations for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor (PhD) is available at PhD Regulations UiT. See also uit.no/hsl/PhD.
 
The position is entitled "Ambiguity". Morphologically induced ambiguity has proven a real hardship for corpus linguists. For example, Russian abstract nouns like radost' 'joy' have a form radosti that is ambiguous, with five possible morphological readings: genitive singular, dative singular, prepositional singular, nominative plural and accusative plural. We can call these forms intraparadigmatic homonyms. Ambiguity can occur across parts of speech, which we call "morphosyntactically incongruent" because they cannot have the same role in a sentence. In Russian, the singular imperative form of 'drink up' is vypej, which is also the genitive/accusative plural of vyp' 'bittern'. Less common but more onerous for disambiguation is "morphosyntactically congruent" homonymy where the grammatical interpretation is the same but the lemma is different, as in Russian leču, which is the first person singular form either of the verb letet' 'fly' or of the verb lečit' 'treat (medically)'. Added 
 together, the various kinds of homonymy result in ambiguity for over 45% of Russian words in a corpus.

This PhD position will investigate the use of weights in a finite state transducer (FST) to address disambiguation problems in Russian with the aim of making linguistically important observations and extending this innovative use of FST technology to other languages, particularly languages of the High North and languages with complex morphology. 

Application Deadline: 17-Aug-2015 

Mailing Address for Applications:
	Attn: Laura A. Janda
	Norway 
	
Web Address for Applications: http://goo.gl/PL39vD 

Contact Information: 
	Laura A. Janda
	Dept:Department of Language and Linguistics
	Email:laura.janda at uit.no
	Phone:+47 77645680  


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