PhD Studentship – Comparative Romance Syntax and Semantics

Award Summary

The studentship will cover annual home tuition fees and comes with an annual stipend of approximately £19,162 (the proposed UKRI level, which is yet to be confirmed for 2024/5). International students with additional funding can also apply.

Overview

The School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics  invites applications for a fully funded PhD studentship within the area of comparative Romance syntax and semantics. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to shape their own research project on Romance causative and perception verbs within the general scope of a wider externally funded project. 

Applicants will be expected to design their own programme of research focusing on the syntax/semantics of causation and/or perception in relation to at least two Romance varieties. We particularly welcome applications to work on languages/dialects which will increase our coverage of lesser studied Romance varieties such as Romanian and non-European French or Spanish. It will be possible to develop new language expertise but a familiarity with or previous experience of collecting online acceptability judgements and/or using linguistic corpora to carry out quantitative analyses would be an advantage. Statistical analysis of results using R will be required and training will be provided for this purpose. 

The successful applicant will join a research team involving the researchers listed above in addition to two 3-year post-doctoral Research Assistants soon to be appointed on the project. They will be based in a thriving School with a creative, and well-resourced research culture that includes the weekly online Romance Linguistics Circle  (co-organised with University of Cambridge) and hybrid linguistics research seminars, the fortnightly in-person syntax reading group, and the regional North East Syntax Seminar (NESS). 

Number Of Awards

1

Start Date

The successful applicant is expected to start in September 2024. 

Award Duration

Three years.   

Application Closing Date

The deadline for submitting applications is 28th March 2024. 

Interviews for the position will be held in April 2024. 

Sponsor

Leverhulme Trust 

Supervisors

This research will be supervised by Professor Michelle Sheehan  (Newcastle University) and Professor Rob Truswell  (University of Edinburgh) and is expected to tie in with the work they are conducting on a Leverhulme Research Project Grant along with Professor Adam Ledgeway  (University of Cambridge) and Professor Sonia Cyrino  (State University of Campinas).  

Eligibility Criteria

An MA/MSc-level qualification in linguistics with a specialisation in syntax and/or semantics is essential, as is expertise in at least one modern Romance language and an interest in studying the syntax and semantics of further Romance varieties. 

Only home student tuition fees will be covered by the studentship. International students with additional funding can also apply. 

If English is not your first language, we require IELTS 7.0 overall (with a minimum of 6.5 in all sub-skills). 

For How to Apply information please see https://www.ncl.ac.uk/postgraduate/fees-funding/search-funding/?code=selll001