Research Associates sought for digital Sanskrit Library project

The Sanskrit Library seeks two research associates for one year, from 1 June 2012 to 31 May 2013, to assist in digital Sanskrit library development projects.

The Sanskrit Library is a collaborative enterprise to build a digital Sanskrit library by integrating manuscript images, texts, linguistic software, and digital Sanskrit lexical sources. In its first major project The Sanskrit Library integrated a large archive of digitized Sanskrit texts with the digital Monier Williams dictionary to provide immediate access to the dictionary by clicking words in a पदपाठ of the text. A nearly completed project creates a digital manuscript catalogue and provides focused access to Sanskrit manuscripts by correlating digital manuscript images with corresponding texts. A current project (Project 1), entitled, "Sanskrit Lexical Sources: Digital Synthesis and Revision," integrates major bilingual and monolingual Sanskrit dictionaries, traditional thesauri, and specialized lexical resources in a single lookup interface. A new project (Project 2) beginning this year entitled, "Bringing ancient Indian semantic and syntactic theory face to face with contemporary computational linguistics," creates a morphologically and syntactically tagged corpus of Sanskrit texts by semi-automatically tagging existing unmarked digital texts. In collaboration with other members of the Sanskrit Computational Linguistics Consortium, the project produces a parser combining the most successful elements of parsing software developed so far, provisionally tags texts, and displays them in an interface that allows manual correction by an expert in Sanskrit knowledgable in Sanskrit linguistic terminology.

The task of the research associate in Project 1 will be to correct the association of headwords in various dictionaries with each other and to analyze and make corrections in lists of words not found in the lexical sources.

The task of the research associate in Project 2 will be to select the correct morphological and syntactic tags for words in their specific contexts in a digital interface that displays a provisional selection and a list of alternate choices.

Both positions require the following abilities:

fluency in reading Sanskrit texts of various genres and historical periods
familiarity with the lexical, grammatical, and syntactic terminology of both the indigenous Indian linguistic tradition and contemporary European Indology and linguistics, and
facility working in the digital medium.

It is expected that applicants meet the following qualifications:

currently hold or be near to completing a doctoral degree or equivalent in Sanskrit, preferably in व्याकरण
have experience working in a digital project, and
be fluent in English.

The applicants are expected to be able to work individually as well as to coordinate with the project director and collaborating indologists, linguists, and computer scientists. The positions carry a stipend of between INR 24,000--30,000 per month, depending upon the qualifications and rank of the applicant. The positions will be housed in one of the collaborating institutions in India in Hyderabad, Mumbai, New Delhi, or Pune.

Apply by sending the following materials to the project director (Peter Scharf) via email (peter.scharf@univ-paris-diderot.fr) with the subject heading, "Sanskrit Library Assistant":

a résumé detailing your education, publications, presentations, and employment in the field of Sanskrit and relevant disciplines (such as linguistics, computer science, or other languages)
a description of your relevant experience with links to products produced
a clear indication of your role and responsibility in their production (whether you are exclusively responsible or the manner and extent of your responsibility), and
the names and contact information of three references.

All applications received by 10 May 2012 will be granted full consideration.