CLCG Midterm Review ( ) Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Threats May 23, 2008

Who (today)? John Nerbonne, Dir., Kees de Bot, Deputy Dir. Roelien Bastiaanse, Neurolinguistics (NL) Markus Egg, Discourse & Communication (D&C) Kees de Glopper, LANSPAN Gertjan van Noord, Computional Linguistics (CL) Muriel Norde, Language Variation & Change (LVC) Jan-Wouter Zwart, Syntax & Semantics (S&S)

Goals of Discussion Reflect on  Strengths, Weaknesses, Threats & Opportunities Formulate Strategy for  Expertise needed (hiring preferences)  Policies, esp. w.r.t. graduate student awards Obtain other advice  No guidelines here!

Structure 10 min. CLCG, John Nerbonne  10 min. discussion 5 minutes/group, Group Leaders  5 min. Discussion/group 30 min. General, Plenum

CLCG Strengths CL, LANSPAN, NL, and S&S strong, active  Publications, regular group meetings, project acquisition, professional visibility Faculty structures  35% research for UD’s (up from 30%)  Rewards for outstanding research, incl. promotion, discretionary funds Critical mass, incl. >40 grad students  Annual recruitment  PhD’s professionally active

CLCG Weaknesses No influence over structural decisions  How many & what sorts of positions LVC still inactive  Problems w. acquisition, project completion  Promising signs, however 2007 meetings 2008 RF fellow Lenz

CLCG Opportunities Discourse & Communication still attractive, now also much stronger in research LANSPAN stronger due to RF fellow Schmid 2 Erasmus Mundus programs in Linguistics  Lang. & Communication Technology (CL-D&C)  Clinical Linguistics (NL)

Threats to CLCG Dependence on student numbers  30% drop in staffing since 1999  Left: Been, Behrens, de Graaf, Pouw, Sanchez, Schaeken, Vet, van Zonneveld, Zwarts No replacement or lateral moves as replacement Administrative absences (dean, vice-dean, NWO board) NL, CL, too small, vulnerable  Vacancies not filled

Strategy, Questions Protecting research time  More student assistants, …  Emphasize research in promotion schemes Fostering excellence  Graduate/Undergraduate faculty distinction?  Assign advisors to faculty Ph.D. projects only to researchers with recent grant submissions? Targeting complementary expertise  Statistics, 1st lg. acquisition?

What should we be asking? Should we try to emphasize central themes more, e.g. processing? Are there opportunities we’re poised for, but not seeing? …?

LANSPAN Strengths Fruitful theoretical perspectives Opportunities for fundamental and applied research Considerable activity in developing grant proposals BCN excellent reserach environment Etoc important partner for applied work RF fellow Monika Schmid

LANSPAN Weaknesses Limited number of sponsored PhD positions within CLCG/Faculty of Arts, however:  New NWO-project De Bot/Schmid on development of bilingual proficiency with Farah Jamjam and Gulsen Yilmaz as PhD’s  PhD position fellowship Monika Schmid: Hanneke Loerts  New bursary PhD positions: Myrte Gosen (interaction and learning) and Veerle Baaijen (writing-to-learn)

LANSPAN Opportunities Attractive MA-program Applied Linguistics and subprogram Language, literacy and learning (Dutch Language and Culture) High interest area of research Extend research scope to whole life span (language, literacy and aging)

LANSPAN Threats Teaching load of tenured staff No formal sabbatical system High pressure on and fierce competition for national and international funding resources

LANSPAN Strategy, Questions Better protection of research time Strengthen relations with BCN, Etoc Partnerships with external research groups institutes and agencies

LVLC Strengths Leading experts (e.g. dialectology, Finno-Ugric studies, grammaticalization) PhD defense: Blokland 2005, Bakker 2007 External funding: Norde (KNAW) Expertise in most branches of IE languages Other activities  Popularization (e.g. Groningen dialects, Low Saxon handbook)  Textbooks (e.g. German grammar) International conferences

LVLC Weaknesses Less opportunities for joint activities  no common paradigm  publications partly in foreign languages All members in language/culture departments -> much non-linguistic teaching No major external funding since 2006

LVLC Opportunities Two new senior members (Norde 2004, Lenz 2008) Three PhD-students (two 2007, one 2008) Monthly meetings (as of 2007) New reading group on grammaticalization (as of 2008)

Threats to LVLC Increasing teaching loads since new BA- programme No chair of Old Germanic studies since Hofstra left 2008 Still no external funding in near future

LVLC Strategy Complementary expertise needed, theoretically-oriented  historical linguistics  sociolinguistics  usage-based accounts of grammar More PhD projects Participation in joint linguistics courses (‘samenwerkingsmodules’), ReMa

Neurolinguistics

Goals & Means to formulate theories on how and where language representation in the brain aphasiology  focus on crosslinguistic research to grammatical deficits neuro imaging  focus on language processing by the right hemisphere (ambiguity; idioms) language acquisition disorders  focus on grammatical deficits and dyslexia

Strengths internationally recognized work, especially on aphasiology and neuro imaging excellent educational system:  EMCL  relatively many PhD students many peer-reviewed papers in international journals  not all in self study

Weaknesses small, so vulnerable group dyslexia highly dependent on soft money

Opportunities joint PhD program with Universität Postdam, aiming for EM status two applications for NWO program grants

Threats too heavy teaching load very small group

Syntax and Semantics: Strengths Vitality: success in attracting promovendi and postdocs Relevance: advancing understanding of the faculty of language in original ways High activity level: syntax seminar, Acquisition Lab Visibility: presence in international conferences, intl. peer reviewed journals Continuity: ‘young’ tenured faculty

Syntax and Semantics: Weaknesses Key positions in Modern Languages Departments not (yet?) filled Not complemented by strong presence of morphology/phonology research

Syntax and Semantics: Opportunities A chance to produce high impact research Increased visibility (output, platforms) International collaboration

Syntax and Semantics: Threats Understaffing Increasing gap between research and teaching Dwindling critical mass of graduate student applications

Syntax and Semantics: Strategy Develop and foster successful research lines Keep high activity level (seminars, presentations, output) Increase national/international collaboration Reflect on common ground in research interests and research agendas