PhD Position Multimodal and Pragmatic Alignment in Dialogue

PhD offer Nijmegen
Type	Job
Categories (tags)	PhD position
Dates	- 2017/05/21
Link	https://www.languageininteraction.nl/contact.html
Address	P.O. Box 9101 6500 HB Nijmegen The Netherlands
Geolocation	51° 49' 55", 5° 50' 31"
Abstract due	2017/05/21
Submission deadline	2017/05/21
Final version due
Notification date
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PhD Position Multimodal and Pragmatic Alignment in Dialogue:

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Details:

“Multimodal and Pragmatic Alignment in Dialogue”

Content Description We are looking for a PhD candidate to study the multimodal and pragmatic aspects of interactive alignment and mutual understanding in dialogue. In dialogue, mutual understanding is achieved interactively and incrementally by means of sequences of communicative turns. While turns have long been treated as speech-only constructs, in their most common realisation (face-to-face social interaction) they are multimodal, combining both visuospatial and verbal resources. Studying the multimodal and sequential aspects of interactive alignment provides new ways to characterise and quantify how communicative choices are shaped and constrained by the differential affordances of visuospatial and verbal representational formats, and what this implies for their contributions towards shared representations. The position is embedded in the larger project “Creating a shared cognitive space: the use of language in interaction”. The basic data, collected in coordination with closely related subprojects, will form a multimodal corpus of dyadic interactions in coordination tasks. A key goal of the larger project is to integrate distinct levels of analysis. We are therefore looking for candidates with a high affinity for interdisciplinary work.

Requirements You should have a Research Master’s (or equivalent) in linguistics, cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, or any other relevant field of study, and you should have native or near-native competence in spoken Dutch (as the primary data will be in Dutch). You should have strong skills in statistics, data science and computational modelling (e.g. Bayesian modelling). You should have experience with multimodal and/or corpus analysis of linguistic data, and familiarity with psycholinguistic work on alignment and gesture. Experience with EEG and fMRI imaging methods is desirable, but not mandatory.

Applications from excellent candidates with a less than ideal profile will be equally considered.

Embedding and Terms of employment You will be based at the Centre for Language Studies, Faculty of Arts, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands.

   Employment: 1.0 FTE;
   in addition to the salary: an 8% holiday allowance and an 8.3% end-of-year bonus;
   the starting salary is €2,191 per month and will increase to €2,801 per month in the fourth year;
   you will be appointed for an initial period of 18 months, after which your performance will be evaluated. If the evaluation is positive, the contract will be extended by 2.5 years;
   the Collective Labour Agreement (CAO) of Dutch Universities is applicable to this position;
   you will be classified as PhD Candidate (promovendus) in the Dutch university job-ranking system (UFO);
   the institutes involved have regulations in place that enable their staff to create a good work-life balance.

Contact information position BQ3-4 Prof. Asli Ozyürek and Dr. Mark Dingemanse

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