Doctoral Position in Linguistics – Language Acquisition of Catalan

Universität Konstanz; Konstanz; Vor Ort; EUR 60.000 - 80.000; Teilzeit

Zusammenfassung

A renowned research university in Germany is seeking a part-time PhD candidate to study the acquisition of expletive elements in languages, focusing on Catalan. The role involves analyzing corpus data and conducting language acquisition experiments with children. Candidates should have an excellent MA/MSc in a related field and proficiency in Catalan and English. This position offers dynamic research opportunities within a supportive and interdisciplinary environment.

Leistungen

Opportunity for interdisciplinary research

Support by student assistants

Excellent career coaching

Qualifikationen

• Some experience working with pre-school or school-age children.
• Experience in child corpora and language acquisition experiments is desirable.

Aufgaben

• Analysis of corpus data
• Design and implementation of comprehension and production experiments
• Working towards a PhD
• Contributing to the SFB by attending regular meetings
• Presenting research at national and international conferences
• Contributing to transfer activities at the Centre for Multilingualism

Kenntnisse

Research interest in child language acquisition

Excellent organizational and interpersonal skills

Native or near native speaker of Catalan

Very good proficiency in English

Knowledge of statistics

Ausbildung

Excellent MA/MSc degree in Language Acquisition/Multilingualism/Linguistics

Jobbeschreibung

Part‑Time PhD Position (65 %, E 13 TV‑L)

Reference no.: 2025/285

Start date: 1 April 2026 or soon thereafter. Position available until the end of 2029.

The University of Konstanz is an internationally successful research university with approximately 10 000 students. The campus university’s architecture promotes interdisciplinary cooperation and a sense of community among researchers, lecturers and students. The University of Konstanz has been continuously funded by the German Excellence Strategy since 2006.

The newly granted SFB 1760 investigates the role of silence and noise in our capacity for perceiving, learning and producing linguistic signals. The first phase will run from April 2026 to December 2029 and encompasses a wide variety of theoretical, experimental, computational and empirical research within linguistics, in collaboration with projects from computer science, computational social science, media studies and sociology. This doctoral position is part of project C03: Acquisition of Expletive Elements. This project investigates the acquisition of expletive definite articles and expletive negation in pre‑school and school‑age Catalan, German and Greek monolingual children from a cross‑linguistic perspective using corpus and experimental data. Corpus data from the CHILDES database will address the emergence of expletive definite articles and expletive negation. Experimental data will investigate the comprehension and production of expletive definite articles and expletive negation. This PhD position will focus mainly on Catalan and can also contribute to German.

Your Responsibilities

• Analysis of corpus data
• Design and implementation of comprehension and production experiments
• Working towards a PhD
• Contributing to the SFB by attending regular meetings and conducting research on SFB topics
• Presenting research at national and international conferences
• Contributing to transfer activities at the Centre for Multilingualism

Your Competencies

• Excellent MA/MSc degree in Language Acquisition/Multilingualism/Linguistics/Speech & Language Therapy, or related discipline
• Research interest in child language acquisition
• Some experience working with pre‑school or school‑age children
• Native or near native speaker of Catalan, very good proficiency in English, and ideally also German
• Excellent organizational and interpersonal skills
• Knowledge of statistics is desirable
• Experience in child corpora and language acquisition experiments is desirable

We Offer

• The opportunity to do a PhD within the SFB 1760 ‘Silence, Noise and Signal in Language’
• An open, motivated research team and interdisciplinary research environment
• Collaborating researchers at doctoral, postdoctoral and professorial levels
• Research support by student assistants
• Excellent career and equal opportunity coaching

Questions can be directed to Prof. Dr. Theodoros Marinis via E‑mail [e-mail].

We look forward to receiving your application by 01.02.2026 via our online application portal.

Applications should contain a short motivation letter (max 2 pages), an academic CV, copies of all previous degrees including detailed transcripts of records, and the names and email addresses of two academic referees (one from the supervisor of the BA/MA/MSc thesis or equivalent). Incomplete applications will not be considered.

The University of Konstanz is committed to ensuring an environment that provides equal opportunities and promotes diversity, as well as a good balance between university and family life. As an equal opportunity employer, we strive to increase the number of women working in research and teaching. We also support working couples through our dual career programme.

Persons with disabilities are explicitly encouraged to apply. They will be given preference if appropriately qualified (contact [e-mail], + 49 7531 88‑4016).