Linguistics
Coordinator: Antónia Coutinho – NOVA FCSH
Educational Objectives
The PhD programme provides students with training on generative syntax and psycholinguistics, text and discourse linguistics, lexicology and terminology. This is a much needed program, given its specific and unique features:
- It brings together background from three typically unrelated areas in language studies. This is a much wanted feature since it contrasts with monodisciplinary advanced programs, and opens up perspectives for relating aspects of language that would remain unexplored.
- It relates abstract language knowledge with very specific situations of use. All areas of specialization study specific domains of language use: L1 and L2 acquisition, impaired language, monolingual multilingual contexts. For all of them, there is an interplay between theoretical constructs and data analysis, and the fact that different areas converge in student training is a welcome result of this program, since students are endowed with multiple methodologies to analyze data, and well equipped to know when a certain type of construction is to be analyzed under a particular type of framework.
- The programme has a very high international profile, given the collaboration of top scholars from some of the best institutions in the world. This opens up several perspectives of collaboration for research, and enables fruitful collaborations for mobility of students, cosupervision of thesis, and promotion of the impact of the graduate students projects and research.
- Student training is completely anchored on the research projects under development at CLUNL.
- Given the relation with the research projects, the programme has the potential for the generation of scientific outputs with a societal impact - e.g. in the contexts of education, health and specialized language use. PhD theses to be developed will include the production of norms for acquisition, language screening tests, and other materials relevant for the assessment of development and impairment. Detailed descriptions of discursive and textual organizations are expected, with a clear impact on materials in the contexts of teaching and the production of learning outcomes for language education. The knowledge on ontologies impacts on the production of relevant and updated corpora and terminologies for special contexts of use.
Opening Date
September 2017
Vacancies and scholarships
Vacancies: 20
Documents Required
The application is made online.
Documents to be submitted with the application:
- Brief description of current research interests in the area of the candidate's PhD programme (1 page maximum);
- Academic, scientific and professional curriculum;
- Photocopy of Identity Card / Citizen Card / Passport;
- Photocopy of NIF;
- Photocopy of Qualification Certificate.
Access Conditions
The programme follows the admission criteria foreseen in the national regulation for academic degrees (Decree-Law 74/2006). Accordingly, candidates must either hold an MA degree, or have a scientific, scholar or professional curriculum allowing inferring ability to successfully engage in the activities foreseen in the PhD programme.
Since NOVA FCSH is concerned with recruiting the best students, the application file is submitted with a discrimination of the candidate’s record of school results, a detailed CV, and, most importantly, a letter of intent, expressing the candidate’s motivation for pursuing a doctoral degree, and a short explanation of his/her research interests.
This letter of intent gives the selection committee the opportunity of assessing quality of writing, understanding of the scientific framework of the program and notion of scientific relevance and pertinence.
Candidates are asked to include in their application files all materials that can be useful for the selection committee to judge whether they can be admitted.
Exclusion criteria include: i) lack of relevant academic qualification; ii) absence of letter of intent; iii) letter of intent reveals insufficient knowledge of the area or absolute irrelevance of the candidate's interests.
The programme's goal is to attract and admit only the best students. Given the inherent interdisciplinarity in the area, admission criteria cannot be too strict, excluding a given academic background. Instead, the selection and ranking criteria, spelled out in the next area of the form, guarantee an adequate selection of interesting students.
Selection and ranking criteria
The selection and ranking of the candidates is conducted by a committee of three members, including the Programme
Director and another two members of the Directive Board of the Programme. Whenever the Programme has several areas of specialization, the committee must include one member per area.
The following parameters are used as selection and ranking criteria:
a) The candidates' school record, expressed according to their final quantitative score in the undergraduate and MA degrees.
- The candidate's mark is expressed in numbers.
- Student's minimal mark in the undergraduate degree is 14/20 if they hold an MA diploma, otherwise it is 16/20.
- This criterion weighs 40% in the candidate’s application final score.
b) The candidate's scientific record, assessed through examination of the CV and any other relevant materials.
- For each relevant publication or participation in research projects, 1 point is added, up to a maximum of 10.
- This criterion weighs 40% in the candidate's application final score.
c) The candidate's letter of intent, evaluated in accordance to a judgment of the committee on the applicant’s motivation and on the relevance and pertinence of the research ideas expressed in the letter.
- This criterion weighs 20% in the candidate's application final score.
d) If the application raises doubts, candidates can be called for an interview, which serves the purpose of clarifying aspects of the elements presented in the application documents.
Curricular Structure
The curricular structure of the PhD programme comprises the following curricular units:
1 seminar on methodological issues - 10 ECTS
1 seminar on advanced topics - 10 ECTS
1 specialized seminar - 10 ECTS
1 elective seminar - 10 ECTS
1 general paper - 20 ECTS
Doctoral thesis - 180 ECTS
Seminar on methodological issues - students will master the most relevant methods that are used in research in contemporary linguistics. The seminar is organized in modules, and addresses the following methods: experimental linguistics (test design, data collection, online and offline methods), corpus linguistics (corpus construction, collocations, data surveys), judgment (magnitude estimation, elicitation methods, naturalistic data); qualitative methods, case analysis.
Interestingly, many of these methods are of interest not only to linguists, but to PhD students working in other disciplines, a much wanted result to bring into the seminar students from other areas, enhancing the interdisciplinary nature of the programme.
Seminar on advanced topics - State-of-the art on the following areas: Psycholinguistics (language acquisition by typically and impaired developing children, the role of the interfaces between computation and cognition in development, crosspopulation and crossmodalities in language development). Text and discourse linguistics (distinctions and interactions between type and genre, discourse and text; textual and contextual constraints on language functioning and use). Terminology (language use in specialized contexts; the role of semantics and ontology constructions in the domain of specialized languages).
Specialized seminar - this seminar is targeted at the specific needs of groups of students working in related subdomains.
The following seminars are offered:
Psycholinguistics: acquisition of movement and referential dependencies, comparison between L1, L2, typically and impaired language development, the interplay between language and processing.
Text and discourse linguistics: epistemological and theoretical issues, concerning a top-down approach of language; texts and discourses as knowledge organization and (personal) action.
Lexicology, Lexicography and Terminology: ontologies, lexicon organization, relation between word knowledge and neology, new approaches to specialized language.
Seminars are offered at a Summer School including the following guest lecturers:
David Pesetsky
Naama Friedmann
Adriana Belletti
Luigi Rizzi
Jean-Paul Bronckart
Jean-Michel Adam
Joaquim Dolz
Charles Bazerman
Gerard Budin
Jean Pruvost
Loic Depecker
Alternatively, students may choose another seminar, offered at another national or international institution, upon approval by the Directive Board of the Programme. The choice of elective and specialized seminars depends on the student’s needs, according to their specific research topics.
General Paper - the Generals Paper is a progress essay written by the student and evaluated by a committee, including a member external to the institution. The goal of this Generals Paper is twofold: it allows fine-tuning the research interests of the student, and it gives him the opportunity of writing a research project acting as a preparation of the thesis. It is also an opportunity to assess student’s ability to move forward in the programme. In the context of general programs offered at FCSH and NOVA, students attend courses in transferable skills, in areas like: research project management, information literacy, research ethics, statistics and entrepreneurship.
Fees
1200€ / Year
Faculty
NOVA FCSH:
Teresa Brocardo
Maria do Céu Caetano
Clara Nunes Correia
João Costa
Rute Costa
Maria Antónia Coutinho
Nino Grillo
Maria Teresa Lino
Ana Madeira
Fernanda Menéndez
Ana Monção
Isabel Tomás
Maria Francisca Xavier
Invited Professors:
David Pesetsky - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lugi Rizzi - Università di Siena
Adriana Belletti - Università di Siena
Naama Friedmann - University of Tel-Aviv
Jean-Paul Bronckart - Université de Genève
Jean-Michel Adam - Université de Lausanne
Joaquim Dolz - Université de Genève
Charles Bazerman - University of California, Santa Barbara
Gerhard Budin - Universität Wien
Jean Pruvost - Université Cergy-Pontoise
Loïc Depecker - Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3
Collaborations within the FCT Programme:
Cristophe Roche - Université de Savoie
Luísa Álvares Pereira - Universidade de Aveiro
Florencia Miranda - CLUNL / FCT, Universidad Nacional de Rosario (Argentina)
Participant Research Units
CLUNL - Linguistics Research Centre of the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
Contacts
Linguistics Department
Building B1, ground floor
E-mail: linguistica@fcsh.unl.pt
Tel.: +351 21 790 83 27
Doctorate Section
ID Building
E-mail: doutoramentos@fcsh.unl.pt
Tel.: + 351 21 790 83 45 ou + 351 21 790 83 00
