34.1846, Support: French; Semantics: PhD, Université Paris Cité

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LINGUIST List: Vol-34-1846. Fri Jun 09 2023. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 34.1846, Support: French; Semantics: PhD, Université Paris Cité

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Date: 08-Jun-2023
From: Jonathan Ginzburg [yonatan.ginzburg at u-paris.fr]
Subject: French; Semantics: PhD, Université Paris Cité


Institution/Organization: Université Paris Cité
Department: Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle
Web Address: www.llf.cnrs.fr

Level: PhD

Duties: Research

Specialty Areas: Semantics
Required Language(s): French (fra)

Description:

PhD studentship in Formal Linguistics

Duration: 36 months
Beginning: Fall 2023 (ideally October 2023)
Place: ATILF, From syntax to discourse axis (Nancy) and Laboratoire de
Linguistique Formelle (Paris)
Salary (net): approx. 1750 euros per month

Thesis supervisors: Mathilde Dargnat (Université de Lorraine and
ATILF-CNRS, http://mathilde.dargnat.free.fr/), Jonathan Ginzburg
(Labratoire de Linguistique Formelle, Université Paris-Cité,
https://sites.google.com/site/jonathanginzburgswebsite/home)

Prerequisites:
 - Masters in Linguistics, Cognitive Science, or NLP,
 - Excellent command of French, and
 - A solid background in formal or/and computational semantics would
be advantageous.

To apply, include the following in your application to the contact
below:
 - CV of at most 2 pages,
 - Transcripts for Masters and BSc/BA degrees,
 - A letter of motivation,
 - Masters thesis (or a draft thereof) and/or any submitted/accepted
publications, and
 - Contact details for one or two referees.

The CODIM project's short description can be found here:
https://www.codim-project.org/

The CODIM project is funded by the A(gence) N(ationale) de la
R(echerche). It focuses on two important linguistic resources that
contribute to structuring monologues or conversations in human
languages : D(iscourse) M(arkers) (therefore/donc,  well/ben,bon etc.
in English/French) and prosody (in particular, intonation). It will
evaluate their status with respect to two major views on how complex
meanings emerge: compositionality (the possibility of combining
meaningful expressions into more complex meaningful expressions) and
pattern- or construction-based approaches (the idea that language
users exploit partly ‘frozen’ strings of words). We will compare the
semantic and prosodic properties of simple and complex French DM (e.g.
ah + bon) found in corpora for written and spoken French, using a
variety of technical tools for DM identification (category-driven text
mining), clustering (statistics and machine learning) and research in
formal semantics and prosody (duration and intensity measures, contour
representation). The project aims at fostering collaboration between
linguists and computer scientists.

Dissertation Topic: French discourse markers and compositionality.

The dissertation will focus on providing a semantic and pragmatic
characterization of a class of DM combinations. This involves issues
including the following research questions:
 1. When are the DMs in a markedly frequent combination and are
intuitively close, accounting for the fact that their combination is
not perceived to be redundant (e.g., donc du coup, alors donc, mais
pourtant, mais quand même, et alors, donc voilà,)?
 2. When the DMs are intuitively quite distinctive, are they just
complementary, which suggests that they introduce unconnected
discourse relations/speaker manifestations? Or is another type of
analysis needed?
 3. Is the combination compositional? Addressing this question
requires discussing and possibly elaborating on existing compositional
techniques. For instance,  current formal approaches in semantics are
functional in an elementary mathematical sense: functions apply to
arguments (which can themselves be functions) to deliver
‘interpretations’. Can one reduce the observed combinations to this
type of mechanism? Also, in cases where such a reduction is possible,
to what extent can it predict or motivate the strength of association
between the DMs which cluster into the combination? Why is this
particular association more frequent than others? Does it correspond,
for example, to specific discourse moves which play a prominent role
in interactions?
 4. Are there cases of repulsion (DMs which do not occur together)?
How come?

Application Deadline: 25-Jun-2023

Contact Information:
Prof Jonathan Ginzburg
yonatan.ginzburg at u-paris.fr



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