Doctoral Position in Linguistics – Language Acquisition of Catalan

Doctoral Position in Linguistics – Language Acquisition of Catalan

Reference no.: 2025/285 . The start date is 1st April 2026 or soon thereafter. This part‑time position (65 %) is funded under the German TV‑L E13 grade and will be available until the end of 2029.

The University of Konstanz is a dynamic and internationally successful research university with approximately 10,000 students. The campus promotes interdisciplinary cooperation and a sense of community. It has been continuously funded by the German Excellence Strategy since 2006. The newly funded SFB 1760 studies the role of silence and noise in language perception, learning and production. The doctoral level part of project C03: Acquisition of Expletive Elements focuses on the acquisition of expletive definite articles and negation in pre‑school and school‑age children speaking Catalan, German and Greek.

Corpus data from the CHILDES database will be analysed for the emergence of expletive articles and negation. Experimental data will investigate the comprehension and production of these expletives. The PhD position will mainly focus on Catalan and may also contribute to German work.

Your Responsibilities

• Analysis of corpus data
• Design and implementation of comprehension and production experiments
• Working towards a PhD
• Contributing to the SFB by attending regular meetings and conducting research on SFB topics
• Presenting research at national and international conferences
• Contributing to transfer activities at the Centre for Multilingualism

Your Competencies

• Excellent MA/MSc degree in Language Acquisition/Multilingualism/Linguistics/Speech & Language Therapy or related discipline
• Research interest in child language acquisition
• Some experience working with pre‑school or school‑age children
• Native or near native speaker of Catalan, very good proficiency in English, and ideally also German
• Excellent organisational and interpersonal skills
• Knowledge of statistics is desirable
• Experience in child corpora and language acquisition experiments is desirable

We Offer

• The opportunity to do a PhD within the SFB 1760 “Silence, Noise and Signal in Language”
• An open, motivated research team and interdisciplinary research environment
• Collaboration with researchers at doctoral, post‑doctoral and professorial levels
• Research support by student assistants
• Excellent career and equal opportunity coaching

Questions?

Questions can be directed to Prof. Dr. Theodoros Marinis via e‑mail at .

Application

We look forward to receiving your application by . Candidates should submit a short motivation letter (max 2 pages), an academic CV, copies of all previous degrees including detailed transcripts of records, and the names and email addresses of two academic referees (one from the supervisor of the BA/MA/MSc thesis or equivalent). Incomplete applications will not be considered.

The University of Konstanz is committed to ensuring an environment that provides equal opportunities and promotes diversity, as well as a good balance between university and family life. As an equal opportunity employer, we strive to increase the number of women working in research and teaching. We also support working couples through our dual career programme.

Persons with disabilities are explicitly encouraged to apply. They will be given preference if appropriately qualified. Please contact or +49 7531 88‑4016.