34.2805, Support: English; Cognitive Science, Pragmatics, Psycholinguistics: PhD, University of Tübingen

Wed Sep 27 05:05:07 UTC 2023

LINGUIST List: Vol-34-2805. Wed Sep 27 2023. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 34.2805, Support: English; Cognitive Science, Pragmatics, Psycholinguistics: PhD, University of Tübingen

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Date: 25-Sep-2023
From: Asya Achimova [asya.achimova at uni-tuebingen.de]
Subject: English; Cognitive Science, Pragmatics, Psycholinguistics: PhD, University of Tübingen

Institution/Organization: University of Tübingen
Department: Department of General and Computational Linguistics
Web Address: https://uni-tuebingen.de/en/26

Level: PhD

Duties: Research

Specialty Areas: Cognitive Science; Pragmatics; Psycholinguistics;
Modeling
Required Language(s): English (eng)

Description:

Ph.D. position in Linguistics (Experimental and computational
pragmatics)

Description:

The DFG-funded Emmy Noether group “Socially-relevant pragmatic
inference”, hosted by the University of Tübingen”, is inviting
applications for a 3-year PhD position in Linguistics (65%, TV-L 13
scale, approximately €2.700 per month before taxes and obligatory
insurances). The starting date is April 01, 2024. The project combines
experimental and computational approaches to the study of inferences
that speakers and listeners draw in the course of communication. In
particular, we will investigate how pragmatic reasoning interacts with
background beliefs of conversation partners, and how these background
beliefs affect the processes of speech production and interpretation.

Research group focus:

In order to understand whether the sentence “The results of the
election were interesting” expresses a positive or a negative
evaluation of the election, and exactly what in the outcome of the
elections the speaker found interesting, one would need to know the
relevant background beliefs of the speaker and possibly her political
affiliations. The speaker might mean that the results were not
transparent or that the candidate who lost the election did not accept
the defeat gracefully, to name a few options. Understanding what the
speaker meant also involves reasoning about what else she possibly
could have said. If she was dissatisfied with the counting procedure
or the behavior of one of the candidates, she might have used more
direct statements, such as “The counting procedure was flawed” or “The
candidate's behavior was not acceptable”. We could then reason why the
speaker did not choose a more straightforward expression, possibly
contemplating two hypotheses: the speaker either did not think that a
more direct statement holds, or she stays indirect to avoid a
potential conflict. It is the interaction of rational pragmatic
reasoning and background beliefs of conversation partners that is the
focus of this project. The goals of the project are fourfold. First,
it seeks to understand how speakers pursue multiple communication
goals at the same time. Second, the project questions how background
beliefs about what is predictable affect the way speakers choose to
encode their utterances. Third, the project considers an additional
step in communication: what the utterance interpretation reveals about
the background beliefs of the listener. The inferences concerning
background beliefs carry social relevance: they allow conversation
partners to learn about each other in situations when direct
questioning is not appropriate or possible. Finally, the project
investigates the cognitive effects of belief accommodation. One main
result of the project will be the development of a computational
probabilistic model that captures the integration of background
beliefs in the process of choosing and interpreting utterances. Such a
model is critical for building computational theories of human
communication that span beyond simple information transfer.

What we offer:

The Ph.D. candidate will gain experience in:
 - Designing psycholinguistic experiments
 - Data processing and analysis
 - Presenting the results of their work at national and international
conferences
 - Preparing research manuscripts for publication

Requirements:
 - A M.A. or equivalent degree in Linguistics, Cognitive Science, or
related disciplines
 - Fluency in English (writing and speaking)
 - Interest in computational modeling of pragmatic reasoning

Not necessary but highly welcome
 - Familiarity with experimental design and analysis in R
 - Programming skills (JavaScript, CSS, HTML) or willingness to
acquire them

The university seeks to raise the number of women in research and
teaching and therefore urges qualified women academics to apply for
these positions. Equally qualified applicants with disabilities will
be given preference.

Application package:
 - A maximally two-page cover letter stating your research interests
and motivation for this specific project
 - An academic CV containing the email addresses of two referees
 - An academic writing sample in English (e.g. M.A. thesis)

Please send your application as a single file and any questions
regarding the application to the professor's email address in the
contact section below.

Application Deadline: 05-Nov-2023

Email Address for Applications: asya.achimova at uni-tuebingen.de

Contact Information:
Dr. Asya Achimova
asya.achimova at uni-tuebingen.de
https://asya-achimova.github.io/

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