10 May: FYI -- PhD funding, Utrecht
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Two 4-year PhD positions in computational linguistics, starting
September 2017
Successful applicants will be participating in the project 'A
composition calculus for vector-based semantic modelling with a
localization for Dutch'. Focusing on empirical data from Dutch, the
project aims to combine a vector-based modelling of lexical semantics
with a typelogical compositional account of how word meanings are
combined to obtain interpretations for larger linguistic units. The
project is funded by the NWO Open Competition programme and will be
conducted at the Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, at Utrecht
University, the Netherlands. Principal investigator (PI) is Michael
Moortgat.
The project provides for two PhD positions and a postdoc position (to
be advertised separately and starting per 2018) for the following
subprojects:
1. (PhD1) *Semantic structures for enriched compositional
distributional models*. This project works out the logical and
mathematical foundations of the proposed grammar architecture and its
compositional vector-based interpretation. A first aim is to show how
the derivations of a state-of-the art typelogical syntax model can be
mapped to an interpretation in finite dimensional vector spaces and
linear maps. Secondly, we investigate enriched distributional models
that exploit the properties of the syntactic source logic more fully.
2. (PhD2) *Typelogical grammar induction for vector-based semantics
from Dutch treebank data*. Whereas PhD1 develops a
language-independent framework for compositional distributional
semantics, the present project develops a localization of the abstract
model for Dutch. The project applies machine learning techniques to
obtain the required lexical entries and the associated vectorial
representations from annotated corpora. For the distributional
interpretation, it employs a linguistically informed notion of
`context', based on the dependency relations of words.
3. (Postdoc) *Empirical validation of the extended vector-based
semantic model*. This project evaluates the abstract grammatical model
on Dutch empirical data, and conducts a number of experiments in order
to measure the performance of the model as compared to the alternative
approaches. The focus is on the structural particularities of the
Dutch language that pose a challenge to a compositional vector-based
interpretation.
For a more complete project description, details on terms of
employment, salary, requirements and application format, please visit
the Utrecht University job advertisement link below. Deadline for
applications is June 10, 2017.
https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/working-at-utrecht-university/jobs
For additional information, contact me at M.J.Moortgat@uu.nl
--Michael Moortgat
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