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PhD Scholarships
in grammatical description
Do you dream of visiting far-away places and unravelling the mysteries of a fascinating language?
We'll welcome you to the PhD program at the Centre for Research on Language Diversity
The Centre for Research on Language Diversity at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, invites applications from suitably qualified students to enter its PhD program.
Our PhD candidates undertake extensive fieldwork on a previously undescribed (or scarcely described) language and write a comprehensive grammar of it for their dissertation. They are expected to work on a language which is still actively spoken, and to establish a field situation within a community in which it is the first language. Their first fieldtrip lasts for about nine months. After completing a first draft of the grammar, back in Melbourne, they go on a second fieldtrip of two to three months. Fieldwork methodology centres on the collection, transcription and analysis of texts, together with participant observation, and — at a later stage — judicious grammatical elicitation in the language under description (not through the lingua franca of the country). Our main priority areas are the languages of Amazonia, the Papuan and Austronesian languages of New Guinea and the Tibeto-Burman languages. However, we do not exclude applicants who have an established interest in languages from other areas.
PhDs in Australian universities generally involve no coursework, just a substantial dissertation. Candidates must thus have had a thorough coursework training before embarking on this PhD program. This should have included courses on morphology, syntax, semantics, phonology/phonetics and comparative-historical linguistics, taught from a non-formalist perspective. We place emphasis on work that has a sound empirical basis but also shows a firm theoretical orientation (in terms of general typological theory, or what has recently come to be called basic linguistic theory).
The Centre for Research on Language Diversity consists, at any one time, of about twenty scholars, working on a variety of languages and typological issues. We have around eight PhD students and about eight three-year Postdoctoral Fellows. Each year a number of senior scholars from across the world spend from three to six months with us as Visiting Fellows.
The scholarship will be at the standard La Trobe University rate, Australian
$22,500 p.a (2010). This scholarship does not cover tuition fees, but students from overseas can apply for a tuition fee waiver. In addition, an appropriate allowance will be made to cover fieldwork expenses. The scholarship is for three years (with the possibility of a six month extension).
CLOSING DATE FOR INTERNATIONAL APPLICANTS: 30TH SEPTEMBER 2011.
CLOSING DATE FOR AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND APPLICANTS: 30TH OCTOBER 2011.
Prospective applicants are invited, in the first place, to get in touch with Arlee Turner at arlee.turner@latrobe.edu.au, providing details of their background, qualifications and interests (including a curriculum vitae) plus a research proposal.
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