Maximum salary: € 2,664 gross/month
Application deadline: 1 February 2015
For more information click here 

The NWO Gravitation consortium ‘Language in Interaction’ invites applications for a PhD position on “Processing Vague Expressions: The Interplay between Semantics, Pragmatics and Cognition”.

A vague term like ‘big’ can be easily used and processed when there is a clear gap between bigger and smaller objects. We will test the hypothesis that a gap in distribution is the default criterion used in the processing of vague words in classificatory tasks, but that other criteria might also come into play. We will also test whether a similar default exists for the processing of quantity expressions such as ‘most’ (use the approximate number system if there is a gap, and precise counting otherwise). The ultimate goal is a unified theory of the processing of vague expressions.

The Netherlands has an outstanding track record in the language sciences. The research consortium ‘Language in Interaction’, sponsored by a large grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific research (NWO) brings together many of the excellent research groups in the Netherlands with a research programme on the foundations of language. The consortium includes representatives from seven universities and one research institute in the Netherlands. These are: Radboud University (RU), University of Amsterdam (UvA), University of Maastricht (UM), Leiden University (LU), Utrecht University (UU), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), Tilburg University (TiU), and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (MPI). Excellence in the domain of language and related relevant fields of cognition is combined with state-of-the-art research facilities and a research team with ample experience in complex research methods and utilization. This consortium achieves both quality and critical mass for studying human language at a scale not easily found anywhere else in the world.

This project will involve collaborative work to be carried out at the Institute of Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam (Prof. Van Rooij) and the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University (Prof. H. Schriefers). The position will be embedded in the ILLC.
Both institutes conduct research in an international setting. English is the lingua franca.

Click here for more information on the Junior PI position and how to apply.