The subjects of the study were kindergarten and first grade speakers of Czech and English. The Czech language contains a considerably higher frequency and variety of complex syllabic onsets than English. Hence, it was hypothesized that if linguistic input affects children's phonological awareness development, Czech children should show higher levels of ability on the tasks. These differences were expected to appear in preliterate kindergarten children if linguistic input, more than literacy and/or general cognitive factors, impacts significantly on phonological awareness. / The finding that preliterate Czech children were more advanced in the ability to manipulate complex syllable onsets suggests that oral language input has an important effect on developing phonological awareness skills. Furthermore, its effect appears to be independent of the effects of literacy.

This diploma thesis deals with the personality of the German writer Reiner Kunze. He is perceived as a mediator between the Czech and German culture, language and literary stage. It focuses on the writer's own literary and translational activities mainly concentrating on Czech poetry. These aspects are researched in chronological order, from writer's literary beginnings to contemporary work. Part of the thesis is also the outline of Kunze's attitude to political events in Czechoslovakia, especially in the late 1960s. The work is finished with the author's role in the contemporary literary world.

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This final thesis works with the topic of standard Czech language at the 1st level of primary schools. The theoretical part deals with the units of the Czech national language, standard Czech language and its development, current phenomenons in contemporary Czech, common Czech language, Czech dialects and sociolects. Furthermore, it briefly describes the development of teaching of standard Czech language at schools and other possibilities of teachers. It also analyzes particular morphological aspects of individual morphological changes subsequently examined in the practical part. The empirical part is a quantitative analysis and comparison of the ability of pupils of the first grade of selected schools in the Central Bohemian Region to identify the non-standard expressions and replace them with the correct standard forms. The work partly verifies the selected hypotheses and compares the results primarily with the results of similar research carried out at the 2nd level of primary schools.

This thesis focuses on the teaching of the Czech language at scioschools. The theoretical basis of Czech language didactics and the problematicsof alternative education are discussed in the first part, while the second part characterizes the individual scioschools in terms of their general concept and teaching of Czech language. The thesis is fomulated as a case study and is methodologically based on observation, interviews and document analysis. Its aim is to provide a partial insight into the practice of Czech language teaching at scioschools and to answer how and with what goal is Czech language taught. It analyses whether some innovative methods and forms of work reflecting the current topics of Czech language didactics are applied and whether is there are any unifying concepts of Czech language teaching. While this work provides insight into these issues it concludes that scioschools aim to lead the students to so-called study autonomy. Scioschools do not work with a unified concept of teaching. It find that the current Czech language teaching practice - forms of teaching, application of innovative methods or aims are heavily influenced by the personality, knowledge and experiences of the teacher - tutor. KEYWORDS scioschools, alternative school, tutor, didactics of the Czech language, aims of...

This year the Institute of the Czech Language AS CR (Ustav pro jazyk cesky AV CR) is celebrating the 100th anniversary of foundation of its direct predecessor, the Office of the Dictionary of the Czech Language (Kancelar Slovniku jazyka ceskeho, KSJC) which provided the administrative background for an ambitious lexicographic project launched already in 1905 by the committee for lexicography and dialectology the Czech Academy of Emperor Franz Joseph for sciences, literature and art, to become the Czech Academy for Sciences and Art (CAVU) in 1918. Although much was done between the wars to establish a state-funded language institute, i.e. an institution which would unify the all-encompassing research of language and systematic work with the national language, for financial reasons the Czech Language Institute was established only in 1946. Six years later, the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (CSAV) was founded and incorporated, among others, the Institute of the Czech Language. During the years, the structure of the Institute underwent various changes which were not merely a response to linguistic needs but also to the events of the time relating to the strengthening of the totalitarian communist power. Top Communist Party officials often interfered with personnel matters of the Institute and...

This thesis argues for a semi-lexical interpretation of Czech modal verbs. It demonstrates that Czech modals participate in syntactic structures that contain a finite verb followed by multiple infinitives (verb clusters), such as Jan musel chtít začít studovat lingvistiku ‘John had to want to begin studying linguistics.’ The term Complex Verbal Domain (CVD) is devised for the verbal part of these structures. The analysis seeks to offer a unified account of modal verbs in Czech in respect of their subcategorization frame in the Lexicon and semantic properties (‘modal meaning’). It also attempts to clarify the confusion regarding modal verbs and modality in traditional Czech grammars by shifting the attention from pragmatics to an approach based on recent development of generative syntax (Chomsky 1998, 2000, 2001). Following the examination of syntactic behaviour of Czech modals in the CVD structure, the thesis proceeds to modify Emonds’ (1985, 2000) theory of semilexicality. This approach assumes that Czech modals are neither fully functional (due to properties such as rich morphological paradigm, ability to undergo Negation, Reflexivization and PF movement), nor fully lexical (they are unable to take clausal complements and distinguish between aspectual pairs). The semi-lexical analysis also shows that there is evidence for the existence of two types of Czech modals, True modal verbs (TMVs) and Optional modal verbs (OMVs). Whilst the former cannot nominalize or denote events, but are able to convey epistemic meaning, the latter undergo nominalization and are capable of event denotation, but do not attain epistemic reading. The semi-lexical properties of both TMVs and OMVs are syntactically reflected in their specific subcategorization frame X, +MODAL, +mod, +__ [V, INF]. The cognitive syntactic feature +MODAL cospecifies the syntactic derivation of Czech modal verbs in the ‘light’ vº, which takes an infinitival VP as a complement. Therefore, I argue that the CVD is syntactically vP. If the original CVD structure involves multiple infinitives (Jan vPmusí VPchtít(INF) začít(INF) číst(INF) tu knihu ‘John has to want to begin reading that book’), the VP complement has characteristics of a flat structure, adapted from Emonds (1999a, 1999b, 2001). On the other hand, +mod is a semantic feature that specifies the lexical behaviour of Czech modals and conveys the ‘modal meaning’, which is formalized in terms of possible worlds semantics as quantification over the modal base. The semi-lexical analysis also investigates the root v. epistemic dichotomy. The thesis argues that this dichotomy does not affect the unified theory of modality in Czech in terms of its derivational and semantic status, but is a result of covert processes at the level of Logical Form (LF), which realize different levels of modal quantification.

The objective of the thesis Reflection of the Predicate Preconception in Studying Process in 6th Grade of Elementary School is to ascertain how the 6th year pupils (aged 12-13 years) think about the predicate. The thesis is grounded in constructivism which actively works with preconcepts, and is related to Czech language teaching. Predicate is described from the linguistic perspective as well as its didactical notion in the Framework Educational Program and in existing textbooks. 37 pupils from 4 schools in Prague completed a series of individual tasks specifically designed for the purpose of this study, and semi-structured interviews with these pupils were recorded, transcribed and analysed. The study shows that the pupils strongly prefer verbal predicate to its verb-noun variety, while they are still capable of suggesting a communication situation for either type of predicate. The study further investigates whether the pupils actively use nouns and adjectives as a non-verb part of a predicate. While adjectives were used frequently, using nouns proved to be challenging. The analysis proves that the pupils do not identify the predicate as a part of sentence important for the meaning of the sentence. The results of the study confirm that pupils consider the meaning of individual words rather than...

The thesis deals with the courses of the Czech language for refugees which are a part of The State Integration Program and which come under The Ministry of The Interior and The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. The thesis is aiming to characterize way the teaching is arranged, frequency of courses, what type of topics are widely discussed within and outside Integration Asylum Centers. Also, it is focusing on issues related to the courses of the Czech language for refugees. The thesis is based on terrain research, which should support the theoretical findings. The research was based on interviews with teachers of the Czech language and a social worker of Integration Asylum Centers both in Česká Lípa. It is also based on interviews with a coordinator of the language courses of Czech for refugees and a coordinator for technical and material support of the courses of the Czech language for refugees project. Keywords integration, migration, Czech language, refugees, Czech Republic

This theses focuses on intellectually talented pupils and from the narrower point of view on pupils of the Czech language at the second level of an elementary school. In the theoretical part, the author deals with a talent for the Czech language, definitions and concepts of a given issue, existing models, characteristics of gifted pupils and approaches of Czech schools towards the education of these pupils. This theses also focuses on linguistic intelligence and personality of teachers of gifted pupils. The aim is to reveal what are the experiences of the teachers of the Czech language with the gifted students and what differences are there between gifted individuals and ordinary students. For this solution is used a structured interview method. The next aim is to find out the attitudes of gifted pupils towards a taught subject. A semi-structured interview method is used to meet this aim. The final aim is to find differences between results of talented pupils and ordinary pupils in the subject of the Czech language. As an appropriate method was chosen a didactic test.