PSIMS: The Pragmatic Status of Iconic Meaning in Spoken Communication: Gestures, Ideophones, Prosodic Modulations

The Faculty of Modern Languages (FB 10), Goethe University Frankfurt, Linguistics/Semantics invites applications for 1 PhD position (E13 TV-G-U, 65% part-time) starting from June 1st 2019 (a later start is possible). The position is initially limited until November 30th 2019 and can be extended until September 30th 2020 (and, subject to funding, beyond that) as a 50% (E13 TV-G-U) part-time position. It is part of the project "The Pragmatic Status of Iconic Meaning in Spoken Communication: Gestures, Ideophones, Prosodic Modulations (PSIMS)" of the Priority Program XPrag.de.

The position involves participation in the research activities of the project, which investigates the pragmatic status of iconic meanings in the three dimensions gesture, ideophones, and prosodic modulations. The main aim of the project lies in the development of formal semantic theories and empirical evaluations of those by experiments and corpus work.

Responsibilities include particularly research on formal gesture semantics and the conception, execution, and evaluation of psycholinguistic experiments. Close cooperation with the other part of the research team at the Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft in Berlin, including a PhD student working on phonetic/phonological aspects of iconicity, is required.