PhD Student Position (100%, 4 years) in Comparative Linguistics (Albanian and Greek)

The Department of Ancient Civilizations of the University of Basel invites applications for a PhD student position (100%) in Comparative Linguistics (Albanian and Greek) within the new SNSF-funded research project 'The Albanian Language in Antiquity' led by Dr. Michiel de Vaan.

Deadline for application: 5 May 2022.
Beginning of the position: 1 August 2022 (ideally).
The interviews are expected to take place on Wednesday, 18 May 2022, or Friday, 20 May 2022, online via Zoom.

The project
The Albanian language forms a separate branch of the Indo-European language family. Besides Greek and Romance languages, Albanian is the only surviving descendant of the languages spoken in the Balkans in Antiquity. Since the earliest coherent text in Albanian dates from 1555, our main access to the history of the language is linguistic reconstruction and the study of early loanwords from and into Albanian. The SNSF project 'The Albanian Language in Antiquity' housed at the Department of Ancient Civilizations at the University of Basel (PI: Michiel de Vaan) seeks to determine what the precursor of the Albanian language looked like in Antiquity, and where this precursor may have been spoken. The project will rely on the evidence from the Old Albanian texts and Modern Albanian dialects, as well as on loanword studies regarding the contacts between Albanian and three of its main contact languages, Ancient Greek, Latin, and Early Romanian. The scientific methods used will be linguistic reconstruction (both internal reconstruction and external comparison with other Indo-European languages) and contact linguistics. Altogether the project team will have a scientific staff of four members, consisting of the PI, one postdoctoral researcher, and two doctoral students. Please note that the two PhD projects are advertised separately, featuring 'Albanian and Romanian' versus 'Albanian and Greek'. It is possible for a single candidate to apply for both positions in one application. In that case, the letters of reference should clearly state your competence for both positions.