Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Language Institute

We report the synthesis of extended two-dimensional organic networks on Cu(111), Ag(111), Cu(110), and Ag(110) from thiophene-based molecules. A combination of scanning tunnelling microscopy and X-ray photoemission spectroscopy yields insight into the reaction pathways from single molecules towards the formation of two-dimensional organometallic and polymeric structures via Ullmann reaction dehalogenation and C-C coupling. The thermal stability of the molecular networks is probed by annealing at elevated temperatures of up to 500 °C. On Cu(111) only organometallic structures are formed, while on Ag(111) both organometallic and covalent polymeric networks were found to coexist. The ratio between organometallic and covalent bonds could be controlled by means of the annealing temperature. The thiophene moieties start degrading at 200 °C on the copper surface, whereas on silver the degradation process becomes significant only at 400 °C. Our work reveals how the interplay of a specific surface type and temperature steers the formation of organometallic and polymeric networks and describes how these factors influence the structural integrity of two-dimensional organic networks.

This article provides an overview of the sociolinguistic situation in Belarus, the most russified of the post-Soviet countries. It summarizes language policy and legislation, and deals in more detail with language management and selected language problems in Belarusian education. It also contributes to the work on language planning by applying Jernudd's and Neustupný's Language Management Theory, particularly the concept of the language management cycle, to analysis of sociolinguistic issues in Belarus.

The article presents the results of a survey on dictionary use in Europe, focusing on general monolingual dictionaries. The survey is the broadest survey of dictionary use to date, covering close to 10,000 dictionary users (and non-users) in nearly thirty countries. Our survey covers varied user groups, going beyond the students and translators who have tended to dominate such studies thus far. The survey was delivered via an online survey platform, in language versions specific to each target country. It was completed by 9,562 respondents, over 300 respondents per country on average. The survey consisted of the general section, which was translated and presented to all participants, as well as country-specific sections for a subset of 11 countries, which were drafted by collaborators at the national level. The present report covers the general section.

In this paper we examine how participants' multimodal conduct maps onto one of the basic organizational principles of social interaction: preference organization - and how it does so in a similar manner across five different languages (Czech, French, Hebrew, Mandarin, and Romanian). Based on interactional data from these languages, we identify a recurrent multimodal practice that respondents deploy in turn-initial position in dispreferred responses to various first actions, such as information requests, assessments, proposals, and informing. The practice involves the verbal delivery of a turn-initial expression corresponding to English 'I don't know' and its variants ('dunno') coupled with gaze aversion from the prior speaker. We show that through this 'multimodal assembly' respondents preface a dispreferred response within various sequence types, and we demonstrate the cross-linguistic robustness of this practice: Through the focal multimodal assembly, respondents retrospectively mark the prior action as problematic and prospectively alert co-participants to incipient resistance to the constraints set out or to the stance conveyed by that action. By evidencing how grammar and body interface in related ways across a diverse set of languages, the findings open a window onto cross-linguistic, cross-modal, and cross-cultural consistencies in human interactional conduct.

The present paper deals with two random variables: length of words and order of words (linear sequence, linear arrangement) in clauses of a text. The question to be answered is: What can a quantitative case study on Czech data add to our present knowledge of the relationship between the length of words and their placement in the clause?

Prenatal learning of speech rhythm and melody is well documented. Much less is known about the earliest acquisition of segmental speech categories. We tested whether newborn infants perceive native vowels, but not nonspeech sounds, through some existing (proto-)categories, and whether they do so more robustly for some vowels than for others. Sensory event-related potentials (ERP), and mismatch responses (MMR), were obtained from 104 neonates acquiring Czech. The ERPs elicited by vowels were larger than the ERPs to nonspeech sounds, and reflected the differences between the individual vowel categories. The MMRs to changes in vowels but not in nonspeech sounds revealed left-lateralized asymmetrical processing patterns: a change from a focal [a] to a nonfocal [ɛ], and the change from short [ɛ] to long [ɛ:] elicited more negative MMR responses than reverse changes. Contrary to predictions, we did not find evidence of a developmental advantage for vowel length contrasts (supposedly most readily available in utero) over vowel quality contrasts (supposedly less salient in utero). An explanation for these asymmetries in terms of differential degree of prior phonetic warping of speech sounds is proposed. Future studies with newborns with different language backgrounds should test whether the prenatal learning scenario proposed here is plausible.

Dialects became a traditional research subject of linguists who collect and analyse data from a linguistic perspective and a spatial perspective. Detailed research on the distribution of dialects and their specifics is an important part of preserving every nation's cultural heritage. With the gradual disappearance of dialects in society, this topic is very relevant. The presented paper briefly describes the history of dialect research and the most important outcome in recent years, the Czech Linguistic Atlas (CLA). CLA presents the data only in a very simple form from a cartographic point of view, so a new approach has been applied. A new atlas was created from this data, focusing on a specific area of dialectology – vowels shortening. This new atlas’ internal structure corresponds to the cartographic atlas theory as a system and contains both analytical and synthetic maps. Synthetic maps show areas with similar (and unique in the case of regionalisation) combinations of evaluated attributes. The concept of map synthesis is described, and further research questions are designed.

The relevance of the research problem is due to the fact that in modern higher professional education system are not taken into account some objective trends taking place in the youth environment. Educational work is taking a special importance as an integral part of specialist training in the modern University. Education of youth is one of the priority directions in the sphere of national security, the most important factor of political, economic and spiritual transformation of the Russian society. The main purpose of the educational work is training of creative thinking and harmoniously developed specialists with profound theoretical knowledge, formed professional competence, high moral qualities. The article provides an analytical assessment of the quality and criteria of educational work at the universities of Russia, the peculiarities of educational work in higher educational institutions. In accordance to the issues and the nature of the study we used systemic-structural and comparative analysis methods. Experience, described in the article, can be used in the process of improving of educational work system with students-specialists of primary schools.

Imageability is the ability of words to elicit mental sensory images of their referents. Recent research has suggested that imageability facilitates the processing and acquisition of inflected word forms. The present study examined whether inflected word forms are acquired earlier in highly imageable words in Czech children. Parents of 317 children (mean age 28 months) were asked whether their child used specific forms of 63 nouns and 35 verbs. For nouns, the forms were nominative singular and plural; for verbs, third person singular present, second person singular present, and the past participle. Plural nouns, and second person and past participle verbs were considered the marked, inflected forms. Analyses revealed that imageability is positively related to the use of the inflected form, even when controlling for the use of the unmarked form in each child, and the inflected form frequency. Two main explanations are suggested: facilitation of form retrieval from long-term memory, or facilitation of inflected form processing, especially by supporting the representations in working memory.

Agreement attraction (i.e. facilitatory interference manifested by sped-up reading times) observed in establishing subject-verb number agreement by comprehenders when reading ungrammatical sentences with number-matching attractor nouns, has been long-established and cross-linguistically validated. For languages with rich inflectional morphology, case syncretism has been suggested to play a role in the phenomenon. In the present self-paced reading study on Czech, we show that unlike in other languages, facilitatory interference is not observed and that not even case syncretism is sufficient for its appearance. We put forward several possible explanations for this anomaly exhibited by Czech compared to other languages. We propose that the lack of semantic agreement in the language could be one of these. Finally, we discuss the implications of these results for the models of long-distance dependency resolution in comprehension.

In this paper, I would like to introduce some classifications of proper names in literature that are currently used in the Czech onomastic research.They are based on the typology of M. Knappová as well as German or Polish onomastics.I would also like to summarize some of my observations of the literary onymic function.Onymic functions are only one aspect which plays a role in the choice of the literary name.The others are literary genre, culture tradition, the author's poetics or contemporary poetics as well as formal linguistic and semantic aspects, etc.In my opinion, literary onymic functions should be understood in this wider framework, in their mutual relations, as they are intertwined, complementing each other and working together.One name can have multiple functions and all literary names must be analysed in the framework of the concrete literary text.

Growth rate of sterlet (Acipenser ruthenus) juveniles and adults was studied and compared with other sturgeon species under experimental and farm conditions in the Czech Republic. During the juvenile development (0+ to 5+) the specific growth rate (SGR) decreased successively from 17.67 to 0.05 %.d-1. During the adult period of development (6+ to 13+), the SGR fluctuated from 0.0191 to 0.0562, mean = 0.0410 %.d-1. In addition, body weight condition and length-weight relationship are presented. The adult period commenced at average age from 4 to 5 years. At the end of subsequent 13 years of life (1st-13th), following values of TL/w (in mm/g) in reared sterlet were determined: 250/53, 350/174, 400/250, 440/320, 465/400, 490/462, 516/525, 546/645, 561/720, 596/860, 610/1014, 625/1199, 660/1456. A very fast growth intensity was determined in the young sterlet (1st and 2nd year) while it decreased in the older fish. Growth intensity of other reared greater sturgeon species (Huso huso, Polyodon spathula, A. gueldenstaedtii, A baerii, A. stellatus), compared with sterlet in early juvenile period of ontogeny, were mainly higher.

Speech rhythm is considered one of the first windows into the native language, and the taxonomy of rhythm classes is commonly used to explain early language discrimination. Relying on formal rhythm classification is problematic for two reasons. First, it is not known to which extent infants' sensitivity to language variation is attributable to rhythm alone, and second, it is not known how infants discriminate languages not classified in any of the putative rhythm classes. Employing a central-fixation preference paradigm with natural stimuli, this study tested whether infants differentially attend to native versus nonnative varieties that differ only in temporal rhythm cues, and both of which are rhythmically unclassified. An analysis of total looking time did not detect any rhythm preferences at any age. First-look duration, arguably more closely reflecting infants' underlying perceptual sensitivities, indicated age-specific preferences for native versus non-native rhythm: 4-month-olds seemed to prefer the native-, and 6-month-olds the non-native language-variety. These findings suggest that infants indeed acquire native rhythm cues rather early, by the 4th month, supporting the theory that rhythm can bootstrap further language development. Our data on infants' processing of rhythmically unclassified languages suggest that formal rhythm classification does not determine infants' ability to discriminate language varieties.

Against the backdrop of the current popularity of the concept of narrative in the social sciences the authors analyse the uses of narrative analysis in empirical social research and provide a unifying frame based on Paul Ricoeur's notion of narrative mimesis. To begin they situate 'narrative' in the context of the social research tradition. Using both a simple and an elaborated definition of narrative they outline the main approaches to narrative analysis relevant to sociology and categorize them as structuralist, hermeneutic, or interactionist. The crux of the article is a discussion of Ricoeur's integrative model of narrative as threefold mimesis and its proposed methodological application in sociological narrative research. The authors argue that Ricoeur's model obviates undesirable analytical simplifications and encourages research that captures all the substantial aspects of narrative, including the producer (the narrator) and the recipient (the listener or reader).

Abstract Literacy research and practice are invigorated by evidence that stories enhance empathy and concentration. Both benefits are associated with attending to inner sensory states afforded by stories. Yet children are rarely asked about how stories, steeped as they are in characters' bodily actions, affect them in bodily terms. We have conducted a qualitative study inviting 9‐ to 12‐year‐olds (N = 19) to share their embodied story experiences. To this end, we developed a toolkit of story excerpts and activities supported with bespoke props that can be adopted in research but also in classrooms and other practice. The toolkit was tested in school‐based focus groups (accompanied by in‐class observations) and home‐based individual interviews. We introduce the toolkit and discuss some of the key prerequisites of its use. Further, we present three main types of embodiment statements provided by our participants: what‐statements about the trigger of one's embodied experience, how‐statements about the sensory or motor quality of the experience and what‐and‐how statements combining both aspects. We consider the distinct potentials of these statement types for fostering children's embodied self‐awareness and story awareness in educational settings and beyond.

Trace amounts of samarium greatly improve materials used in sonar and ultrasound imaging

In this article, the authors examine the production of television news by a public service broadcaster, Czech Television. The aim is to understand the way in which reporters and their colleagues 'make the news'. Ethnomethodologically informed ethnography is used to analyse cooperation among TV professionals and make visible the everyday, routine, and situated practices with which they perform their tasks. The authors study how practitioners perform their work in consideration of their colleagues' work, that is, with an awareness of a common aim. They argue that the professional system of relevances of newsmakers is structured by socially established and shared knowledge of the genre specifics of television news reports. The authors describe the genre structure of a standard television news report from a praxeological perspective, and they show how reporters, camera operators, sound technicians, editors, and others mutually collaborate to create a shared understanding of the system of genre norms. The article devotes particular attention to a key component of reporting work: the organisation and filming of interviews with respondents. The analysis demonstrates that interviews with respondents function as an auxiliary television news genre and that the system of relevances in this case is derived from the television news report as a superordinate genre.

The bionomy of Barbitistes constrictuswas studied using emergence traps, sticky bands, sweeping and counting of females in two localities and Malaise traps in 27 localities in spruce forests in the eastern part of the Czech Republic in 1998-2004. It is a common species there but with a low population density. It has five instars (based on the length of femur and tibia) and the larval development lasts 10-12 weeks. Nymphs climb up to crowns after hatching. Adulthood extends from July to October. Abundance of eggs in the ground is very low. The most effective and exact monitoring method seems to be the method of sticky bands. It is also easy to catch nymphs on forest edges with low branchiness and southern or south-eastern exposition. To catch adults, the transect method and observation of trees are the most suitable. Traps are generally less effective (emergence trap, Malaise trap). The use of cut trees during thinning and principal felling is possible.

Various studies within the Good-Enough Approach observe that people often make errors in answering comprehension questions after reading garden-path sentences such as While Anna dressed the baby played in the crib. Recently, it has been claimed that readers form a full syntactic analysis of these sentences, but they do not completely prune the original misanalysis. This article presents evidence that these findings do not hold for all garden-path sentences. The main finding of the Good-Enough Approach—that the comprehension questions targeting the initial misanalysis yield significantly higher rates of incorrect answers after garden-path sentences, in comparison with after control sentences—was replicated here in three self-paced reading experiments on Czech. However, these experiments show a similar pattern of results for other comprehension questions, such as questions targeting an analysis that is not syntactically licensed at any point of processing. These results point out that certain garden-path structures may be very hard to process and that the process of garden-path repair might not be successful at all. Based on these results and the results of previous studies, the idea of a range of difficulty levels for garden-path structures is proposed.

The thematically oriented biographical interview (TOBI) is a research tool used frequently in contemporary qualitative research. Compared to other interviewing techniques, its main advantage is its combination of a thematic focus and sensitivity to the perspective of the interviewee. The authors demonstrate that TOBI is made up of several constituents: first, it is a speech infrastructure (comprising a conversational and a narrative component), and second, it encompasses three kinds of relevance (biographical relevance, identity relevance and specific thematic relevance). The main part of the article is devoted to an analysis of the types and forms of relevance that occur in the corpus of oral history biographical interviews. The analysis shows that, contrary to the common effort of researchers to increase the significance of a respondent's testimony by emphasising the specific thematic relevance, the biographical and identity relevances are equally important for successfully capturing the actor's perspective and smoothly conducting a TOBI. In their explication of relevance and its forms the authors draw on the theory of relevance developed by Alfred Schütz.