Postdoctoral Researcher in Linguistics (m/f/d, E 13 TV-L, 100%)

20.06.2025

Application deadline: 13.07.2025

The following position is available in the newly established Collaborative Research Center 1718 “Common Ground: Cognition – Grammar – Communication” (funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG).

Postdoctoral Researcher in Linguistics
(m/f/d, E13 TV-L, 100%)

The position begins on 01 October 2025 and ends on 30 June 2029. 

The position is associated with project B5 “Clarifying the Common Ground: A Crosslinguistic Investigation of the Form and Pragmatic Function of Reprise Questions and Reprise Fragments” of CRC 1718. The project seeks to undertake crosslinguistic investigations into the morphosyntactic and prosodic forms and pragmatic functions of reprise questions and reprise fragments, using experimental syntactic methods and speech production and perception experiments for prosodic analysis. For the advertised postdoctoral researcher position, this work involves conducting experiments on the morphosyntax of reprise questions and reprise fragments in a sample of European languages from different language families (approx. 6 languages from 4 families, e.g., English, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Russian, Turkish).

Only applicants that hold (or will very soon hold) a PhD degree in Linguistics or a similar Language Science  area are eligible for the role.
The ideal candidate for this position has:

• a solid background in formal linguistics, particularly regarding sentence-level morphosyntax, current issues in pragmatics (speech acts, at-issueness, QUDs, etc.), and the interface between them;
• experience with conducting acceptability judgment experiments on context-dependent morphosyntactic phenomena;
• experience with conducting crosslinguistic research.

We encourage applications from individuals who closely align with the profile of the ideal candidate, even if not all criteria are fully met. If you believe your experience and skills broadly match the description, we would be pleased to hear from you.

The successful candidate will be a (near-)fluent speaker of English. Proficiency in German, though welcome, is not required for this role.

The project offers a cohesive interdisciplinary research environment at the University of Tübingen and a dedicated interdisciplinary project team. We will support the postdoctoral researcher in gaining any skills essential to the successful completion of the project, and we offer him/her/them the opportunity to obtain additional skills related to interdisciplinary language science research more generally. The successful candidate will also be involved in shaping the conceptual framework underlying of the entire Research Center through taking on a central role in one of the Center’s ‘Research Platforms’.

Equally qualified applicants with disabilities will be given preference in the hiring process. The University of Tübingen is committed to equal opportunities and diversity. It therefore takes individual situations into account and asks for relevant information.

The University of Tübingen seeks to raise the number of women in research and teaching and therefore urges suitable qualified women academics to apply for this position.

The work associated with this position cannot be conducted fully remotely. The successful candidate will perform many of his/her/their regular responsibilities on-site, at the University of Tübingen.

Your application, which must be written in English, should consist of a motivation letter summarizing your suitability for the role and an extensive CV that includes a list of publications (if any) and the contact details of three potential referees. The deadline for submitting applications is 13 July 2025 at 23:59 (Berlin time). Applications should be addressed to the project’s principal investigator, Jun.-Prof. Dr. James Griffiths, but should sent electronically to claudia.heberlespam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de . Enquiries may also be sent to this email address.

Interviews will be conducted via Zoom on 21 and/or 22 July 2025. Candidates shortlisted for interview will be notified as soon as possible after the submission deadline.

The employment process will be handled by the central administration of the University of Tübingen.