6 January: fyi -- psycholinguistics (x2), The Netherlands
Index of January 2004 | Index of year: 2004 | Full index
The phonetic realization of contrastive utterances and given/new
information:
Postdoc, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen
Rank of Job: Postdoc (one year)
Specialility area: Phonetics
1)
Description:
Within the framework of the European project COMIC
(http://www.hcrc.ed.ac.uk/comic/), a one-year research project has been
defined. The goal of this project is to explore the way in which human
conversants employ prosodic cues to indicate a) contrastiveness, and b)
given/new information in their utterances.
In referential communication experiments, subject dyads will be
presented with an array of items, which differ from each other in
either shape, color or both. Subjects will have to refer to one of the objects
in the array, in such a way that their interlocutor will be able to
single out the intended object. The principal independent variables are
A) whether of not the referential utterance is, or needs to be,
contrastive (a within-array manipulation), and B) whether it refers to
given or new information (a between-set manipulation).
The main tasks of the researcher are:
performing a survey of existing literature, both from phonetics
(linguistics) and psychology.
designing and running elicitation experiments
performing phonetic analysis of the resulting speech data
investigate whether there are correlations between task performance
(speed, accuracy) and the identified phonetic properties of the utterances
Expected results of the project are scientific publications and
recommendations for multimodal applications.
For this project, we are looking for a post-doc with the following
qualifications:
A PhD degree in phonetics
Experience with experimental psycholinguistics.
Native (or near native) command of English, German, or both.
Further information:
Prof. W. Levelt is heading the COMIC project. Dr. Jan Peter de Ruiter
will be pleased to answer your questions. His e-mail address is:
janpeter.deruiter@mpi.nl. His telephone number is: +31 24 3521541.
Procedure:
Please send an e-mail, including your CV, before Januari 15th 2004 to
Jan Peter de Ruiter (janpeter.deruiter@mpi.nl).=20
Start date: 1 of February or 1 of March 2004.
Cognitive modeling of spatial references in living space descriptions
Postdoc, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen
Rank of Job: Postdoc (one year)
Specialility area: Experimental psycholinguistics
2)
Description:
Within the framework of the European project COMIC
(http://www.hcrc.ed.ac.uk/comic/), the following one-year research
project has been defined.
In describing spatial configurations such as living spaces, a speaker
has to solve the problem of linearization of a spatially complex
representation into sequential utterances. Levelt (1981, 1982) has
described the principles underlying the linearization strategies used
by
humans in describing a path through a network of nodes (graph). Linde &
Labov (1975) have formulated a general linguistic framework for
adequately describing living space descriptions. As Ullmer-Ehrich
(1982)
observed, there are several possible general strategies to linearize a
living space description.
A second problem the speaker faces is the use of spatial references.
Living space descriptions rely heavily on spatial predicates, such as
"in front of X" or "to the left of Y". The use of these spatial
predicates and the reference system within which they are to be
interpreted vary considerably, even within one living space
description,
with respect to a) the coordinate system (intrinsic vs. relative), b)
the origin of the coordinate system (e.g. speaker, or an external
object), and c) the relatum. (see Levinson, 2003).
The primary research question in this project is how, whether, and to
what extent listeners can actually make sense of naturalistic living
space descriptions. The goal of the listener is to derive a cognitive
representation from the living space description that is as similar as
possible to the speaker's representation of the living space that she
(the speaker) has originally described. This resulting representation
will in all likelihood differ, possibly even substantially, from the
original one.
Expected results of the project are scientific publications and
recommendations for multimodal applications.
The main tasks of the researcher are:
A. To record naturalistic living space descriptions
B. To create accurate blueprints of the living spaces that have been
described in A.
Depending on the qualifications of the post-doc researcher, EITHER
C1. To establish how accurate listeners are in reconstructing the
living
spaces described in A from these (spoken) descriptions.
D1. To determine the relation between the accuracy of reproduction and
the strategy and type(s) of spatial reference(s) used in the living
space description.
Or
C2. To implement a cognitive (computational) model that performs the
interpretation of the living space automatically, resulting in a =
spatial
representation (2-dimensional map) of the described living space.
D2. To compare the performance of the model from C2 with human
performance data.
For this project, we are looking for a post-doc with the following
qualifications:
=B7 A PhD degree in experimental psycholinguistics
=B7 Experience with transcription and coding of linguistics information
=B7 A strong background in linguistics
Or=20
=B7 A PhD degree in Cognitive Science (with focus on language
processing)
=B7 Working knowledge of linguistics
=B7 Experience with cognitive (AI) modeling
Further information:=20
Prof. W. Levelt is heading the COMIC project. Dr. Jan Peter de Ruiter
will be pleased to answer your questions. His e-mail address is:
janpeter.deruiter@mpi.nl. His telephone number is: +31 24 3521541.
Procedure:
Please send an e-mail, including your CV, before Januari 15th 2004 to
Jan Peter de Ruiter (janpeter.deruiter@mpi.nl).
Start date: 1 of February or 1 of March 2004.
Index of January 2004 | Index of year: 2004 | Full index