[Histling-l] PhD position in Scandinavian Linguistics at HU Berlin

[Muriel Norde]

Dear colleagues,

[apologies for cross-posting]

The Department of Northern European Studies at Humboldt University of 
Berlin has a vacancy for a PhD researcher in Scandinavian historical 
linguistics, which is to be filled as soon as possible. I would be most 
grateful if you could forward this announcement to potentially 
interested candidates!

-------------------

The Department of Northern European Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu 
Berlin is seeking to appoint a a PhD researcher starting as soon as 
possible. The post is part time (65%), for a fixed-term period of four 
years.
The position is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), as 
part of the Collaborative Research Center ''Language-users‘ knowledge of 
of situational-functional variation.'' The PhD researcher will be 
appointed in the subproject ''Register emergence and register change in 
Germanic'' with Prof. Dr. Karin Donhauser, Prof. Dr. Muriel Norde and 
Dr. Lars-Erik Zeige as principal investigators.

The main aim of this project is to study the emergence of registers in 
two early Germanic languages and to explore register change over time. 
The relation between register and language change is an understudied 
topic in historical linguistics, which so far has focused primarily on 
space and time as dimensions of variation. Nevertheless, there is 
evidence that specific authors vary in their use of lexical items, as 
well as in their use of morphological and syntactic patterns, according 
to situational-functional settings. There is furthermore evidence that 
medieval texts were linguistically adapted to different audiences. In 
both cases, the attested variation is, in part at least, 
register-specific. The focal languages of the project, German and 
Swedish, are comparatively well documented for the relevant time periods 
(ca. 750-1050 for German and ca. 1250-1450 for Swedish) and belong to 
the same language family. What is more, the development of more formal 
registers in both of these languages is strongly associated with 
literacy, Christianization, and the emerging functional bilingualism of 
Latin and the vernaculars.

For our study of emergent registers, we initially concentrate on 
individual authors with a comparatively wide range of text production. 
We adopt this approach in order to avoid problems related to the 
unbalanced representation of different genres in the historical corpora 
of the Germanic languages. It furthermore enables us to filter out other 
variables, such as time and place. Adopting a bottom-up approach, we 
will identify lexical, morphological, and syntactic features with 
relatively high frequency in specific textual functions (e.g. narrative, 
revelatory, educational, scientific, or legal), drawing data from 
(annotated) corpora as a basis for quantitative analysis

For the project on register emergence in Old Swedish we invite 
applications from candidates with a MA in Scandinavian Linguistics or in 
General Linguistics with a focus on North Germanic. In-depth knowledge 
of Scandinavian language history and at least one older Scandinavian 
language (preferably Old Swedish) is required, as well as experience in 
corpus linguistics and statistics. Basic reading knowledge of Latin is 
preferred, but may also be acquired as soon as possible after appointment.

Closing date: December 27th, 2019

For further particulars and to apply for this post please contact Muriel 
Norde at muriel.norde at hu-berlin.de.

-- 
Prof. dr. Muriel Norde
Professorin für skandinavistische Sprachwissenschaft
Nordeuropa-Institut
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Unter den Linden 6
10099 Berlin

Besuchsanschrift:
Universitätsgebäude am Hegelplatz
Dorotheenstr. 24, Raum 3.118

http://www.murielnorde.com

Editor-in-chief, Folia Linguistica Historica
http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/flin

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