PhD Student Position in Comparative Linguistics (Albanian and Romanian)

Your position

This PhD dissertation project will be devoted to the lexical and grammatical correspondences between Albanian and Proto-Romanian, the descendant of Balkan Latin. A significant amount of Proto-Albanian words were borrowed into Proto-Romanian, and Albanian and Romanian share various other grammatical features too. This suggests that both languages were spoken in each other's vicinity sometime during the first millennium AD, although it remains disputed, where this was.

The PhD student will classify the different types of evidence for Romanian-Albanian contact according to formal, semantic and geographic criteria, and will analyse the evidence in the framework of theories on language contact and the different social settings that explain or predict different linguistic outcomes. The analysis will take into account the insights gained from the other subprojects of The Albanian Language in Antiquity. In addition, the PhD student will contribute the Albanian-Romanian correspondences to the Corpus of Early Albanian Loanwords which is part of our project, and which is complementary to the Munich-based Digital Dictionary of Old Albanian (DPEWA). Also, during all four years of the project, the PhD student will take part in joint project meetings, co-author collaborative papers, and co-organize scientific events in the context of the project.

Your profile

Applicants should hold a Master's degree in Comparative Linguistics or a related field (the Master's thesis is expected to be completed by the start of the position), with a focus on language reconstruction, preferably of the Indo-European languages. A good knowledge of Latin and/or Romanian historical linguistics is required for this position, as well as the willingness to acquire at least a good passive knowledge of Albanian. Candidates should be highly motivated to conduct linguistic research at the intersection of philology, dialectology, comparative reconstruction and historical sociolinguistics. They should have an excellent command of written English, a good knowledge of other research languages, and be able to work autonomously within an internationally and institutionally diverse environment.