School of Computer Science
The University of Birmingham
United Kingdom
RESEARCH STUDENTSHIP
funded by an EPSRC Grant
for PhD studies in
Computational Linguistics on
METAPHOR AND RELATED ISSUES
(the related issues include parsing, corpus studies,
handling of other types of non-literal language,
uncertain reasoning, and belief reasoning)
NOTE: There are funding restrictions concerning non-UK students.
Please see below.
Under a recently awarded research grant from the Engineering and
Physical Sciences Research Council of the UK (EPSRC), we seek a suitably
qualified and motivated research student. The student would start as
soon as possible after mid-September 1999, but qualifications,
background, goals and enthusiasm for the area of the grant are more
important than timing constraints, within reason. The student would be
supervised by Prof. John Barnden (http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~jab). The
selected student would work in close interaction with a Research
Fellow, Mark Lee (http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~mgl), as well as with John
Barnden.
The project is centred on the further development of an already
implemented approach to the handling of metaphorical utterances and the
complex uncertain reasoning they entail, and on new research ramifying
from that approach.
We seek students willing to engage in research of the following
illustrative types: further development and expansion of the implemented
reasoning system and its principles; research directed at producing a
natural language front-end or back-end to work with the reasoning
system; machine translation of metaphorical language; research on other
non-literal phenomena such as metonymy, especially with regard to their
relationships to metaphor; corpus-based and/or lexicon-based analysis of
metaphorical and other non-literal phenomena in real discourse;
corpus-based processing of metaphor etc; use of large-scale lexicons or
ontologies in metaphor processing; uncertain reasoning techniques that
may be appropriate to metaphor processing; belief reasoning issues
related to metaphor; mathematical complexity analyses of algorithms of
interest in the grant; development of formalizations of our approaches;
metaphor in forensic linguistics; metaphor in education; metaphor in HCI.
That is not an exhaustive (albeit exhausting!) list. We believe that a
prime qualification of research students is that they should be
self-motivated, and we welcome further topic suggestions that are
sufficiently well connected to the research planned under the grant. In
particular, we would welcome suggestions for inter-disciplinary studies:
for instance, ones that test the existing approach by means of
psychological experiment, or that strengthen links with related work in
cognitive linguistics. However, such interdisciplinary research would
have to involve substantial computational elements (whether practical or
theoretical) in order to lead to a successful PhD dissertation in our
School.
Naturally, we strongly prefer candidates with backgrounds in Computer
Science, Artificial Intelligence or Computational Linguistics. However,
other candidates are encouraged to apply if they are interested. Such a
candidate, if selected, might be required to undertake additional study in
those areas.
The School of Computer Science has research strengths in the fields of
Artificial Intelligence / Cognitive Science, Theoretical Computer
Science and Software Engineering. The School's other research in
Natural Language Processing has involved work in the subareas of speech
acts, story understanding, speech synthesis and recognition, sign
language morphology and unification grammar parsers. Research in the
School on non-linguistic AI topics related to our grant includes work on
automated reasoning, uncertain reasoning, diagrammatic reasoning,
intelligent agent architectures and emotions.
The School has a flourishing research culture in which there is frequent
interaction between people working in different areas, and between our
AI/Cognitive-Science researchers and researchers in other Schools.
There are exciting possibilities for interaction with the following
parts of our University among others:
CORPUS RESEARCH GROUP (http://www.clg.bham.ac.uk/)
COBUILD(http://titania.cobuild.collins.co.uk/)
FORENSIC LINGUISTICS GROUP (http://www-clg.bham.ac.uk/forensic/)
EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH GROUP
(http://www.eee.bham.ac.uk/sharplem/manage.htm#lab)
METAPHOR researchers in the Department of English, School of Education, and
elsewhere.
Applications and Further Information
------------------------------------
There is no closing date for applications, but early applications are
advisable. Applicants must have or be about to gain at least an upper
second class honours degree, or an overseas equivalent, in a suitable
area (see above).
NOTE FOR NON-UK STUDENTS: The EPSRC will pay tuition fees but NOT
maintenance costs for students coming from outiside the UK. Also,
students are required to have a "relevant connection" to the European
Union -- please see
http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/Documents/Guides/Students/Annex1.htm
The School's research student prospectus, application form, and
instructions on how to apply are available from:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/studentinfo/form_mailer.html
Applicants, especially from outside the UK, should also carefully study
relevant portions of
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~pjh/prospectus/funding/research.html
To find out more about the research activities of the School see:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/system/auto-gen/staff.html
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/research.html
If you have an adiministrative question which is not answered in the
documents cited above, please email admissions@cs.bham.ac.uk.
For questions about the nature of the EPSRC grant research and other
academic matters, please email John Barnden (J.A.Barnden@cs.bham.ac.uk).
The University and City
-----------------------
The University of Birmingham is a major civic university founded in 1900
with about 18,000 students of whom about 25% are postgraduates. It is
both research-led and research-leading.
The university is located on a pleasant and spacious campus, in a leafy
area a few miles south of the recently redeveloped City Centre and yet
only a short drive away from beautiful countryside. The campus has a
small railway station adjacent to it, connecting to the city centre and
to towns south of Birmingham. The city is well placed for access to all
parts of the UK, and is two hours by rail from London. It has an
international airport.
The city boasts excellent programmes of classical music, ballet and
theatre. Also, Stratford-upon-Avon with its world-renowned theatrical
productions is only a 40-minute drive from the campus. The University
also offers high-quality artistic, theatrical and musical venues.
The university's Central Information Service manages a web page
providing information about the university and the city
(http://www.bham.ac.uk).