School/Section
Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture
Division
Unspecified
Staff Category
Research
Position Type
Full Time
Grade
Grade 6
Salary
£38,249 - £45,413
Ref No

JOB DESCRIPTION

The project will investigate the multimodal properties and acquisition of canonical information-seeking questions (e.g. ‘Do you like spiders?’) and biased questions (e.g. negative questions like ‘Don’t you like spiders?’, tag questions like ‘You like spiders, don’t you?’) in English and German. The project is a collaboration between the universities of Aberdeen (PI: Dr Johannes Heim), Cologne (PI: Prof. Dr. Sophie Repp) and Newcastle (PI: Dr Rebecca Woods). This role will be hosted at Aberdeen; another PDRA will be hosted at Cologne. For a short summary see https://uni.koeln/ZZ5LU. A summary of the work packages is available on request.

This role will contribute to the project work packages focusing on the prosody and co-speech gestures associated with biased questions. The candidate will undertake the following collaborative tasks:

• Corpus analysis of prosody and gesture of negative questions in German speech corpora
• Statistical analysis and theoretical evaluation of the findings
• Publication of the results in peer-reviewed journals
• Travel (conferences, 6 monthly team meetings in person)
• Multimodal production of negative questions by English adults (audio & video)
• Pragmatic judgements of negative questions (written & audio) by English adults (online surveys)

The main candidate requirements are as follows:

• PhD in linguistics, psychology or related subject
• English language skills at (near) native level
• Experience in phonetics/laboratory phonology research
• A working knowledge of German language skills to CEFR B1 or B2 is also essential
• Desirable: experience in gesture research and/or pragmatics, German language skills to (near) native level.

Salary will be at the appropriate point on Grade 6, £38,249- £45,413 per annum with placement according to qualifications and experience.
Informal enquiries should be made to Dr Johannes Heim, Lecturer in Linguistics, e-mail: johannes.heim@abdn.ac.uk
Should you require a visa to undertake employment in the UK you will be required to fulfil the minimum points criteria to be guaranteed a Certificate of Sponsorship under the requirements of the Skilled Worker visa. At the time an offer of appointment is made you will be asked to demonstrate that you fulfill the criteria in respect of qualification and competency in English. For research and academic posts we will consider eligibility under the Global Talent visa.
To apply online for this position visit www.abdn.ac.uk/jobs
Job Reference Number: LAN143R
The closing date for the receipt of applications is 26 May 2025
The School of Language, Literature, Music & Visual Culture embraces a diverse working environment and recognises the many benefits this can bring. Applications from individuals from across all of the equality protected characteristics are encouraged.

• Corpus analysis of prosody and gesture of negative questions in German speech corpora
• Statistical analysis and theoretical evaluation of the findings
• Publication of the results in peer-reviewed journals
• Travel (conferences, 6 monthly team meetings in person)
• Multimodal production of negative questions by English adults (audio & video)
• Pragmatic judgements of negative questions (written & audio) by English adults (online surveys