17 July: fyi -- phd funding, Australia
Index of July 2002 | Index of year: 2002 | Full index
PhD scholarships in grammatical description
The Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University in
Melbourne, Australia, invites applications from suitably qualified
students to enter the PhD program.
Our PhD candidates generally undertake extensive fieldwork on a
previously undescribed (or scarcely described) language and write a
comprehensive grammar of it for their dissertation. We prefer
students 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. Fieldwork methodology should be centred 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 areas of specialisation
are the languages of Amazonia, the Papuan languages of New Guinea, and
the Aboriginal languages of Australia.
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 Research Centre for Linguistic Typology consists, at any one time,
of about twenty scholars, working on a variety of languages and
typological issues. Besides the permanent staff of Professor R M W
Dixon (Director) and Professor Alexandra Y Aikhenvald (Associate
Director) we have an array of Research Fellows and PhD students; each
year a number of senior scholars from across the world spend from
three to six months with us as Visiting Fellows. Our personnel this
year includes specialists on spoken languages from the following
families or areas: Quechua, Tsimshian, Arawak, Arawá, Tacanan,
Barbacoan, Indo-European, Turkic, Afroasiatic, Niger-Congo,
Nilo-Saharan, Tibeto-Burman, Austro-Asiatic, Sinitic, Papuan,
Austronesian and Australian.
There is also an excellent Department of Linguistics in the Faculty of
Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University, with Professor
Barry Blake, Associate Professor David Bradley, Associate Professor
Kate Burridge, and Dr Hilary Chappell. And there are fine Departments
of Linguistics at the University of Melbourne and at Monash
University.
The scholarship will be at the standard La Trobe University rate,
Australian $16,432 p.a. Students coming from overseas are liable for
a visa fee (effectively, a tuition fee); we will pay this. A small
relocation allowance may be provided on taking up the scholarship. In
addition, an appropriate allowance will be made to cover fieldwork
expenses. The scholarship is for three years.
The deadlines for submitting an application for a scholarship are: 30
September for non-Australians, 31 October for
Australians. Applications are to be lodged through the Research and
Graduate Studies Office, La Trobe University, with a copy sent to
RCLT, La Trobe University.
Further information about RCLT is at our website:
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/rclt. See, in particular, our February 2002
Newsletter, available on this website.
Prospective applicants are invited to get in touch with Professor
Aikhenvald at a.aikhenvald@latrobe.edu.au, providing details of their
background, qualifications and interests.
Professor Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, FAHA
Associate Director
Research Centre for Linguistic Typology
Institute for Advanced Study
La Trobe University
Bundoora, Vic
Australia 3083
e-mail a.aikhenvald@latrobe.edu.au
phone: 61-(0)3-9467-3079 Uni
61-(0)3-9455-0020 home
fax 61-(0)3-9467-3053
Administrator: 61-(0)3-9467-3128
Index of July 2002 | Index of year: 2002 | Full index