4 December: fyi -- phd funding, Amsterdam
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Call for Applications
The ILLC/Department of Philosophy of the Universiteit van Amsterdam
offers a PhD position with the project "The Economics of Language.
Language Use and the Evolution of Linguistic Conventions", which is an
NWO funded Vidi project, with Dr. Robert van Rooij as the principal
investigator. The PhD position will be mainly about the evolution of
linguistic conventions. A short description of the project can be found
below.
We sollicit applications for this position from candidates with a
master degree (now, or soon) in formal linguistics (e.g. semantics, but
also philosophy of language), learning and dynamical systems, and/or
game theory, and with proven expertise in the areas covered by the
project. (See the project description.)
The application should comprise:
-> a curriculum vitae
-> reference(s) for recommendation
-> a sample of written work
-> a short statement of research interest
Submissions packages should be here in Amsterdam before:
-> January 20, 2005
Applications should be sent to:
-> Dr. Robert van Rooij
ILLC/Department of Humanities
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 15
NL 1012 CP, Amsterdam
The Netherlands
-> or by email to
"r.a.m.vanRooij@uva.nl"
A summary of the PhD project:
In this project we will investigate which factors are favorable to the
emergence and sustenance of linguistic rules, and more in particular
how language use influences linguistic interpretation rules. In
historical linguistics (e.g. Traugott, Croft) and psycholinguistics
(e.g. Thomasello) it is argued that conversational implicatures play a
crucial role in the emergence and acquisition of grammar. Linguistic
rules are seen as automated, conventionalized language-processing
devices, which turn pragmatic context-driven inferences more
independent of context. A rigorous formal account, however, is still
lacking. Artificial Intelligence has given rise to an experimental
approach towards the evolution of meaningful communication (e.g.
Hurford, Kirby, Steels). It studies how linguistic rules (a shared
lexicon, and some rudimentary combinatorial principles) can
spontaneously emerge from actual communication. The results of these
experiments are very appealing, but also in need of theoretical
explication.
Evolutionary game theory (EGT) - developed in biology as a
formalization of evolution via natural selection -, appears to be an
attractive theory to provide this theoretical explication (e.g. Nowak).
Indeed, economists and philosophers have shown that EGT can provide
natural explanations for certain social conventions.
The main goal of the PhD project will be to extend the coverage of the
linguistic rules as developed in experimental approaches of the
evolution of language (e.g. Hurford, Kirby, Steels), for instance by
explaining under which circumstances quantificational expressions and
modalities are likely to emerge, and to give the experimental results a
theoretical underpinning in EGT.
For more details, contact Robert van Rooij: r.a.m.vanRooij@uva.nl
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