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Hermann Paul Scholarship in Linguistics 2024

The Hermann Paul School of Linguistics is offering one scholarship for a PhD candidate in Basel, starting between August 1st and September 1st 2024. Application deadline: April 5th 2024. More information here or apply directly here.


ERC Consolidator Grant für HPSL-Alumnus Malte Rosemeyer

Wir gratulieren unseren Alumnus Malte Rosemeyer, inzwischen Professor für Romanische Sprachwissenschaft an der Freien Universität Berlin, zum Consolidator Grant des Europäischen Forschungsrates für sein Projekt „Experimental replication of historical reanalysis processes“ (EXREAN).

Hier finden Sie die Pressemeldung der FU Berlin mit einer kurzen Vorstellung des Projektes

Herzlichen Glückwunsch, Malte!


Some impressions: HPSL Day 2023, Basel

This year’s HPSL Day, hosted by the University of Basel, took place on October 20th 2023 in the Wildt’sches Haus in Basel. 

Following an opening address by Prof. Dr. Angela Ferrari, there was a social activity where participants got to know the venue and each other in an informal way.

The highlight of the morning program was a poster session in which participants presented and discussed their research. They were first put in groups, and afterwards everyone was free to move around.

The tone for the afternoon was set by an inspiring and thought-provoking keynote entitled, Digital Technologies in Linguistics – Linguistics in the Digital Society, by Prof. Dr. Noah Bubenhofer, Chair of the Department of Linguistics in the German Seminar of the University of Zürich (UZH) and UZH representative of CLARIN. 

For the remainder of the afternoon, participants shared ideas about how the HPSL could further support them in their work and career as researchers. Those sharing similar interests formed groups to come up with concrete plans for a possible project and these projects were then presented to everyone. A hands-on guide on how to actually implement the projects was provided by the Basel coordinator of the HPSL, Dr. Philipp Dankel, before the day concluded with an apéro.

Attended by around 60 participants from both universities of Basel and Freiburg as well as visiting researchers, the HPSL Day gave members of the HPSL an invaluable opportunity to connect with researchers from different fields and across universities and to foster a sense of community within the HPSL. We hope that all participants profited from the HPSL Day and that it inspired new collaborations, friendships, and activities within the HPSL network.


New publication: New Cambridge Element: Pragmatics in Translation

The English linguistics team in Basel is happy to report an open access publication with Cambridge University Press, written by Daria Dayter, Miriam Locher and Thomas Messerli. You can download it here.

This Element addresses translation issues within an interpersonal pragmatics frame. The aims of this Element are twofold: first, we survey the current state of the field of pragmatics in translation; second, we present the current and methodologically innovative avenues of research in the field. We focus on three pragmatics issues – relational work, participation structure, and mediality – that we foreground as promising loci of research on translational data. By reviewing the trajectory of pragmatics research on translation/interpreting over time, and then outlining our understanding of the Pragmatics in Translation as a field, we arrive at a set of potential research questions which represent desiderata for future research. These questions identify the paths that can be productively explored through synergies of the linguistic pragmatics framework and translation data. In two case study chapters, we offer two example studies addressing some of the questions we identified as suggestions for future research. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.


New publication: New Cambridge Element: Fiction and Pragmatics

The English linguistics team in Basel is happy to report an open access publication with Cambridge University Press, written by Miriam Locher, Andreas Jucker, Daniela Landert and Thomas Messerli. You can download it here.

This Element outlines current issues in the study of the pragmatics of fiction. It starts from the premise that fictional texts are complex and multi-layered communicative acts which deserve attention in pragmatic research in their own right, and it highlights the need to understand them as cultural artefacts rich in possibilities to explore pragmatic effects and pragmatic theorising. The issues covered are (1) the participation structure of fictional texts, (2) the performance aspect of fictional texts, (3) the interaction between readers and viewers and the fictional texts, as well as (4) the pragmatic effects of drawing on indexical linguistic features for evoking ideologies in characterisation. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.


New publication: New Cambridge Element: Corpus Pragmatics

The English linguistics team in Basel is happy to report an open access publication with Cambridge University Press, written by Daniela Landert, Daria Dayter, Thomas Messerli and Miriam Locher. You can download it here.

This Element discusses the challenges and opportunities that different types of corpora offer for the study of pragmatic phenomena. The focus lies on a hands-on approach to methods and data that provides orientation for methodological decisions. In addition, the Element identifies areas in which new methodological developments are needed in order to make new types of data accessible for pragmatic research. Linguistic corpora are currently undergoing diversification. While one trend is to move towards increasingly large corpora, another trend is to enhance corpora with more specialised and layered annotation. Both these trends offer new challenges and opportunities for the study of pragmatics. This volume provides a practical overview of state-of-the-art corpus-pragmatic methods in relation to different types of corpus data, covering established methods as well as innovative approaches. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.


Dr. Franziska Thurnherr’s PhD on “Interpersonal pragmatics and the therapeutic alliance: the collaborative work in email counseling” is now available open access in our NIHIN book series.

Former HPSL scholarship holder Dr. Franziska Thurnherr’s PhD on “Interpersonal pragmatics and the therapeutic alliance: the collaborative work in email counseling” is now available open access in our NIHIN book series. Enjoy reading!


Neues Projekt: “CHORD-talk-in-interaction”, mit HPSL-Beteiligung ab 1.April 2023

Swissuniversities bewilligt im Rahmen der „Swiss Open Research Data Grants“ das Projekt „Data-sharing skills in corpus-based research on talk-in-interaction (CHORD-talk-in-interaction)“ mit einem Budget von 150’000.- CHF. Das Projekt fragt danach, wie komplexe audiovisuelle Aufnahmen von Gesprächen aufbereitet und bearbeitet werden müssen, um sie in Form von Open Research Data (ORD) optimal für die wissenschaftliche Öffentlichkeit zugänglich zu machen. Von der Universität Basel sind Prof. Dr. Lorenza Mondada (Französische und Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft) und Prof. Dr. Martin Luginbühl (Deutsche Sprachwissenschaft) an diesem Projekt beteiligt. Das Projekt startet am 1. April 2023.

Weitere Informationen: https://www.swissuniversities.ch/themen/digitalisierung/open-science-2021-2024


Hermann Paul Scholarship in Linguistics 2023

The Hermann Paul School of Linguistics is offering one scholarship for a PhD candidate in Basel, starting between August 1st and September 1st 2023. Application deadline: March 31st 2023. More information here or apply directly here.


Ulderup Stiftung: PraeDoc-Stipendium

Am Romanischen Seminar der Universität Freiburg sind zum 1. April 2023 bis zu drei Prae-Doc-Stipendien von 1.000,00 Euro monatlich für sechs Monate und maximal 12 Monate ausgeschrieben (vorbehaltlich der Mittelfreigabe). Aussagekräftige Unterlagen sind in deutscher, englischer, französischer, spanischer oder italienischer Sprache bis spätestens 31. Januar 2023 einzureichen. Nähere Informationen zu Bewerbung und Fristen finden Sie hier.